


Aurora

by hellkitty



Category: Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Multi, Sticky Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 10:47:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 27,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alleged start of an alleged kink meme fill, eventual Drift/Perceptor/Wing, sticky.  Probably angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

[This ](http://shadow-vector.livejournal.com/166666.html)ends up as a prequel. 

 

  


“He comes with us.” Drift, his white armor splattered with the green blood of the Galactic Enforcers, optics narrow and dangerous.

“He’s…dead, Drift,” Rodimus said, cautiously.The others ranged in an unwary circle around Drift, who was nearly vibrating with emotion. The cheery mech they knew from the Lost Light was nowhere to be seen:this was almost Deadlock, from the hard set of his mouth, to the rigid posture.

“He’s a Cybertronian. He doesn’t stay here.” The white and red jet hung limply—dead—in his arms.

“Drift.” Ultra Magnus stepped forward, frowning.

Drift twitched back, turning the jet’s body away from him. “They lied. We can’t leave him here. They’ll—“He couldn’t even finish the sentence.

“He’s right,” Ultra Magnus said, after a moment of stern consideration. “The Galactic Council troops would not be trusted to treat the body well, if they believe he died in our fight.”He sounded unhappy, as though the answer tasted bad, either the ‘siding with Drift’ or the ‘disagreeing with the Galactic Council, no one could tell.

“Fraggin’ ridiculous,” Whirl said. “Whole stupid thing is..stupid.” He waved his claws, unhappily.

“Thanks for that insightful comment,” Brainstorm rolled his optics.“Yes, no? Our window’s closing.”

“Yes,” Rodimus said, quickly, “Do it. Whatever happens, it certainly can’t hurt him.”

Drift barely had time to snarl at Rodimus when Brainstorm fired his miniaturization pistol and the world dissolved into a crackle of white blue energy.

[***]

Perceptor knew he’d find Drift here. The mech hadn’t left the medibay since they’d returned, sitting in some tense vigil by the slack, empty frame of the jet he’d broughtback from Theophany.Whoever had taken him after his death had lavished the same repairs on the frame as if there were some hope of recovery—the spark chamber was reconstituted, the chassis armor replaced, welds clean and tight and new. Only the spark’s vital pulse was missing, only the glow in the amber optics.

Drift looked up as he approached. “Sorry,” he said, quietly. “It’s just….” He gave an inarticulate shrug. “I never thought I’d see him again.”

“I understand,” Perceptor said. He didn’t, not entirely. But he knew if anything happened to Drift, he’d have a hard time leaving his frame, even if he knew, from all scientific bases, that the spark was extinguished.

Are you jealous of a dead mech, Perceptor? Yes. He was jealous of the way Drift looked at this Wing, reverent, almost worshipful, jealous of the way Drift’s hand stroked down the jet’s cheek. And he was jealous of Wing, who was just se ipsum, beautiful. Even dead, even devoid of life, the jet was a beautiful creature, elegant design, lovely, precise proportions, the white armor’s polish pearlescent and deep. He wasn’t sure he could bear the optics, lit from within, gold as the brightest suns.

“You need some rest. And fuel,” he said, mastering his own petty emotions. And a run through the washracks, he added mentally. Drift was still stained from battle, charred and clotted with gore.

“I should,” Drift said, with a tense smile. “I just…there’s so much I never got to say.” The blue optics floated down to Wing’s face again, the mouth pulling with emotion. And Perceptor knew what it would be: Drift had said the same words to him, but he hadn’t been able to reciprocate, the words too huge and raw and dangerous.

Drift pushed to his feet, hands lingering on the mediberth. “It’s…not like he’s going anywhere, though, right?” A bitter joke, black as ash, one Perceptor could only nod at. Drift’s optics shimmered with emotion and Perceptor could feel his EM field flutter, disrupted. “I’d give anything to talk to him again. Just once.” A lopsided, wounded smile as he turned his gaze up to Perceptor. “Stupid, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so,” Perceptor said, wanting nothing more than to reach out, fold Drift in his arms, but knowing it would do no good. Nothing he could do could heal this.

Or…could he?

“You should get some rest, Drift,” he said, absently, his mind racing.It was worth a look, at any rate.If nothing else he’d learn about their repairs, the strange mix of archaic and advanced that marked their technology.

Drift gave a nod, his shoulders drooping as though suddenly weary.“I should. I’ll,” he grimaced, as though realizing for the first time that Perceptor might have been worried, might have sought him out out of concern, “I’ll see you later?” A question, not wanting to bank on the answer.

Perceptor was willing. Always, for Drift. “Yes.”

[***]

It wasn’t impossible.Perceptor studied the scan again. It wasn’t impossible. The way the repairs had been done, the small induction node on top of the spark chamber…it was like they knew there was a way to revive him and had just chosen—for some reason—not to.

Why?

“Why what?” First Aid said, leaning to examine the notes on the pad, and only then did Perceptor realize he’d spoken the question aloud.

“I was just wondering,” Perceptor said. “About this node.”Maybe he interpreted it wrong.Maybe it wasn’t what he thought.

“Hmmm.” First Aid peered at it. “It seems like it’s a new addition, the same installation as the repairs. See the weld flux?” He nodded to himself.“And that means that, if we got a scan from,” he looked up, over to where Wing lay on the slab, tugging one arm gently aside, “If we got a scan from this angle, we could probably see a small capacitance node.”

Perceptor nodded. So he thought so, too.

“And that means,” First Aid said, reaching for the scanner, just to make sure, “that he could be revived.” He looked up. “But why wouldn’t they?”

“I don’t know,” Perceptor said. “Maybe they were interrupted, by whatever…removed them.” It had been eerie, moving through the ruins of the dead city, sensing the strange rush of flight and the long ages of abandonment battering against each other.

“Or maybe,” First Aid’s optics tilted, studying Wing’s face. “Maybe there’s a reason, you know?”

“Such as?” He couldn’t imagine a reason, not to keep a mech dead.Not if Wing was anything like Drift had told him he was.

“Well,” First Aid shifted, uncomfortably, fumbling with the datapad in his fingers. “What if, I mean, would you want to come back to life only to find someone you loved was gone?”

No. No he wouldn’t. And the thought made him look at Wing, alluring and beautiful even in death, with a kind of mix of sympathy and envy. A worm of doubt twisted in his mind, but he thrust it aside. He couldn’t turn away now, not if they had the chance to bring someone back from the dead.

“I don’t suppose,” Ratchet’s voice cut through Perceptor’s speculations like a laser scalpel, “either of you are going to do me the courtesy of telling me what you’re doing in my medibay.”

“We’re, uh, we think there’s a chance to revive him,” First Aid stammered, holding the datapad up like a shield between them.

“If there was, don’t you think I’d have done it?” An accusation, the blue optics angry and weary at the same time.

“Uh, with a sort of, you know, experimental procedure,” First Aid squeaked. “Like I did for Fortress Maximus.”

“And note how well that worked out,” Ratchet scowled. “Still finishing up repairs from Max’s little rampage.”

“Ratchet, that’s unfair.First Aid’s actions brought a mech back to life, and saved a lot of mechs at Delphi.” Ratchet should know this: he was there.

“Not all of them,” First Aid said, drooping.

“More than anyone else could have,” Perceptor said. Strange how he would defend others so ardently, but never himself. And it was worth it to see Ratchet back off. At least a bit.

“So. You think you have a plan.”

Perceptor nodded. “It shouldn’t be difficult.”

Ratchet looked between the two of them, his shoulders high and tense. “Show me.”

First Aid exchanged a nervous look with Perceptor, before swiveling the datapad toward the chief medic.“It shouldn’t be that difficult,” First Aid began, before Ratchet silenced him with a chop of his hand.

“Hnf.”Ratchet handed the pad back. “Possibly. You get one shot.”

“One?”

Ratchet frowned. “One. Any more than that’s going to be desecrating a corpse.”

Perceptor nodded. Clear enough: one mistake and whatever advantage the Crystal City medics had given them would be lost. “We will be extremely careful.” He had to be. For Drift.

[***]

It was cycles later before he gave up for the night, determining that the only thing he really needed was to put his notes aside and look at them in the morning with fresh optics.Right now, all he wanted to do was recharge.

No, that wasn’t all he wanted to do, but that was, he figured, the surest thing he could hope for. Right now he couldn’t handle any more disappointment.

Perceptor coded the key to his quarters, air gusting from his ventilation system, shoulders drooping, tired. Yes. Recharge would be good, a sensuous indulgence of the sort he desperately needed.

He stopped, inside the door, light spilling in from the hallway, lighting on the white and red shape of Drift, curled on his berth.

The swordsmech had cleaned himself up after the battle: Perceptor could smell cleanser and polish from here, the light glazing over the white armor. The story was readable, even from here: Drift, wanting him, coming to his quarters, using his command cadre overrides…waiting. And staying, Perceptor thought, stepping closer so the door closed behind him, wrapping them both in darkness.It took a moment for his optics to adjust to lowlight, as he moved closer.Wake him? No. Drift was exhausted, doubtless after the exertion and the stress of the day. Better to let him recharge, Perceptor thought, levering himself onto the berth, curling himself behind the smaller mech. He insinuated one hand over Drift’s ribstruts, weaving it against Drift’s chassis, sighing with contentment.

Drift stirred against him, giving a soft, drowsy sigh, wriggling back against Perceptor’s frame.And all of Perceptor’s nascent jealousy seemed petty, suddenly, his worry baseless, and all he wanted, and all Drift wanted, was to twine around the dearest thing in his world.

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Drift purred against Perceptor, squirming his way to wakefulness. He felt Perceptor shift against him, the longer, lean thighs sliding against his.  Drift grinned up into the sleep-smoothed face. “Did I wake you?” he teased.

“No.” Perceptor mumbled the lie.  Because it didn’t matter that he’d been asleep: this was the best thing to wake up to.  “I’m sorry I missed what you wanted to say last night.”

Drift grinned, worming up in Perceptor’s embrace. “You didn’t miss it,” he said, sliding a knee between Perceptor’s thighs, “Just delayed it.” 

“Oh.”  A tentative smile, warmed by the light in Drift’s optics, the sudden slide of a hand up his back. 

“Oh,” Drift mimicked, his grin widening. “I’ll just have to make up for lost time then.” 

Any witty remark Perceptor might have cooked up got smothered in the kiss, Drift’s mouth hot against his, insistent and prying his lipplates apart in a needing, hungry kiss.

Drift pushed up, rolling on top of Perceptor’s frame, pressing his weight against the berth, curling his pelvic frame against Perceptor’s.

Perceptor sighed, spreading his thighs, cradling Drift’s frame, his hands reaching for the sleek shape of Drift’s chassis. He moaned into the kiss, clinging to Drift as the white mech’s spinal struts curved sinuously over his.

“Want you,” Drift murmured, his hand slipping between them, opening their interface hatches with a smooth, practiced move. The touch was familiar, and welcome, and comforting: the touch of a lover confident with his partner, knowing what he wanted, what he liked. Perceptor had never had this before, never had anything beyond a furtive and shameful fumbling partner, or one who wanted his own pleasure first.

“You have me,” Perceptor said, tipping his hips up, offering his valve.  He knew Drift would take what he offered, would want what he wanted. It was a treasure to have choice, to offer, to give.  Drift purred against him, nuzzling his audio as he shifted his body, his spike nosing into Perceptor’s valve. 

A moment, sweet and clear, between them, just at the cusp of commitment, and their optics met, blue in blue, their ventilations synchronizing, without thought, without effort, as Drift lowered his spike, sheathing it in Perceptor’s valve.  They were joined, in body and on a deeper level, intimate and profound and something beyond the mere electrical pleasure of their bodies.

Drift began moving in him, against him, his movement gentle and wanting, rather than demanding. Perceptor didn’t mind that other mood of Drift’s either, when the mech took him, nearly violent, heedless of everything except desire and lust and some darkness he was purging, but this was what he wanted—needed—right now. This shredded the last tatters of his petty jealousy: Drift wanted him, cared about him. And how much more if Perceptor revived Wing for him?

That was a petty thought, perhaps, selfish and mean, and he thrust it aside. Now mattered, now and the past it had wiped away between both of them, now and the future it promised. There was only Drift, only Perceptor, and only this complicated beautiful thing between them.   

[***]

Drift settled onto the stool they’d dragged over for him, posture tense, optics fixed on Wing’s face, trying to ignore or not-see the cracked-open chassis, the white armor spread and depaneled, the sparkchamber exposed. Too much emotion there, too many memories he found he wasn’t ready to handle.

The face at least was serene: Drift could almost convince himself that Wing was merely recharging, would awake at any moment.

Maybe he would.

No. No. Don’t get your hopes up, Drift. Perceptor told him this was a long shot, an attempt, but one worth trying, for both their sakes. And Drift had shuddered against Perceptor,  burying his face, not trusting his own emotions, when the possibility was brought to him: Wing, alive. Again. By Perceptor’s hand.  It was too much—too much to imagine.

Even now, when it was on the brink of happening.

“Ready?” First Aid’s voice, soft, solicitous.

“Don’t worry about me,” Drift murmured. “Just…this.”

“We’ll do our best.” A pat on the red spaulder, professional and comforting. The hand then went to smooth a tangled cable leading from the opened armor of Wing’s chassis, a gentle little touch that seemed to speak more to Drift than anything else how fragile and risky this was.  He found himself edging forward on the seat, the Great Sword clacking against the stool. Drift could hear the thrum of some machine, something cycling up to charge, a tension ratcheting sound that seemed to fill the air, like some acrid smell. 

He didn’t know what to look for, so he stared at Wing’s face, the serene, beautiful lines, smoothed from the rictus of pain he remembered.  Wing, he thought, wanting to reach and touch the jet’s frame, brush his cheek, but holding back, mindful of witnesses, mindful of the procedure, holding all his hope and want and will to himself. 

The hum grew, and the body on the berth began to vibrate, softly, from the connection.  Just reflex, Drift thought, trying not to look up to read Perceptor’s face, to scour it for omens or signs. 

One optic shutter twitched, lifted, and Drift could hear the soft hiss of filaments lighting, the optics glowing dimly, barely enough to light the crease beneath the lowered lid.

Just reflex, Drift told himself. Just mechanical response to running current.

Even so, he found himself shifting forward, the word, “Wing,” taking flight from his vocalizer, like a bird of hope, a fragile dove fluttering and uncertain.

Another twitch of an optic shutter, and the sound of an actuator firing, and the head moved, the mouthplates shifting, trying—it seemed—to shape a word.

“Wing,” Drift repeated, the word surer this time, still lamely fluttering on unsteady wings, “Please.” All the pleading his spark could imagine in that one word, that one syllable, hoping and begging  both at once.

A sound, from a vocalizer long bereft of charge, trying to summon a voice. And even like that, underpowered and staticky, it was Wing’s voice, the sweet, almost fluting tenor.  Drift clutched at the berth, almost dizzied with hope.  It was Wing’s voice. It was Wing, no mere reflex.  It was Wing and he was trying to say something.

“Perceptor,” First Aid’s voice was soft but worried, like a dagger of chalk, cutting through Drift’s awareness. “We’re…,”

“I see it,” Perceptor said, and the unflappable coolness of his voice was bracing, reassuring. If Perceptor could see it, it was halfway fixed, Drift thought. All Drift could do was stare at the golden lines under the shuttered optics, praying for response from deities he only half-believed in.

The optics flickered, and then the shutters retracted: Drift found himself plunged into memory, as the two amber optics lit upon him, like the twin sunsover Theophany.  

“….drift,” the voice croaked, ragged and raw, and Drift felt his optics sting with emotion.

“Wing. Yes. It’s me.”  It struck him, suddenly, how ironic this was: an echo, an inversion of their relationship—he waking Wing this time, to a new, beautiful world.

The mouth’s corners twitched upward, as though preparing to leap into a smile, when the body bucked and arched, the vocalizer screeching to a high keen. The optics squinted, face contorted in a rictus of pain. 

“Perceptor!” Drift didn’t want to take his gaze off Wing, in case Wing should fade and die. He wanted every moment possible, stored in his memory, however painful. 

“Yes,” Perceptor said, voice distracted. 

“He’s in pain.” Drift hated that the words sounded like an accusation, hated the fear swirling around his spark.  Below him, Wing panted, optics wide and barely seeing.  “Do something!”

“It’s unavoidable,” Perceptor said, and Drift’s shoulders twitched, feeling some fear route itself to a flare of anger. Unavoidable.  No. He wouldn’t accept that.

“The spark needs to gather charge,” First Aid said, quietly, as though reading the tension in Drift’s shoulders. “It takes time. But it’s a good sign, Drift. It is.” Reassuring and patient, like Wing, in a way, Drift thought.  Enough of a reminder to hurt.  But he forced himself to take hope in First Aid’s words, to take faith in Perceptor’s abilities, even as part of him writhed in agony at the thought of Wing in pain.

Was he selfish to want Wing back if it cost the jet this? 

He rocked back, away from the thought. “Wing,” he said, his voice riddled with doubt. He wanted so badly, so much, it felt a little terrifying, like the anger he could still feel, banked from the gutters, burning in his spark, only louder, violent. And unlike anger, Drift had no idea how to channel this.

He begged, inwardly, for any sign of recognition, any abatement of pain. If he could take it for Wing, he would, gladly, every ounce of suffering.  He clasped Wing’s hand, limp and cold, in his own, as though he could squeeze life into him that way or make a circuit to channel off the pain.

Another twitch of the optics, before they focused, this time staying on Drift’s face.  The fingers twitched in Drift’s grasp. “Drift,” the jet said, shakily.

“Yes!” Drift whispered. “Yes.” It was the only word that mattered, an affirmation of everything larger than himself, and he felt something like the brush of divinity against his cheek as he pressed his face against the back of Wing’s hand, his lips to the knuckles in some holier kind of kiss. 

“Where…?”  The optics left his face, just for a klik, taking in the highkeyed and unfamiliar light of the medibay, the bustle of Perceptor leaning into his chassis, disconnecting the leads.

“Long story,” Drift said, feeling the sudden span of time and history and space between them like a gulf,  his toes barely on ground. How could he possibly tell Wing any of it? All of it? 

“For later,” First Aid said.  “He needs to rest, first.”

“I’ve rested enough,” Wing said, even as his voice quavered.

“No, you haven’t,” Perceptor said.  “You need time to heal. And your systems will need maintenance.” 

The gold optics fixed on Perceptor’s mismatched blue, nodding, gingerly. “Yes,” he said, meekly, seeing something he didn’t question on the other’s face. “But, please.  Can Drift stay?”  His hand tightened in Drift’s, almost childlike and needy. Drift’s spark ached, and he would have defied Perceptor just for the light in those gold optics. 

Perceptor’s gaze flicked between them. “All right.” The mouth tugged into a frown. “Drift. He’s…fragile.”

Drift nodded. He knew, he could feel it in Wing’s touch: fragile and delicate and he wanted nothing more than to fill his senses with Wing, alive once more.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wing awakes again. Kind of angsty.

He told Wing everything, things he didn’t think he could ever speak to anyone. He told him slowly, over the course of days, in tiny pieces, like shards of a mosaic, each sharp edged and bright, adding up to some truth, some picture Drift couldn’t see himself, except for the beautiful reflection in Wing’s optics.

The rest of the ship seemed to disappear for him, reducing down to a blissful alternation: days with Wing, softly lit with glowing affection and memory; and nights with Perceptor, twined in a sort of passionate gratitude.  It numbed the despair and disappointment he might have felt, had he had the time: the loss of their first lead to the Knights of Cybertron. To Drift, Wing, alive, was a more than fair exchange.

And he knew it couldn’t last, not for long, but he refused to let the future mar the present.  He’d done that too many times in the past. He would prove that he had learned.

“Ready?” He looked up from where he had Wing’s thigh armor clasps opened, a microsprayer in one hand. First Aid had given him instructions how to oil and loosen the joints. It was a tedious task, perhaps; intimate,  definitely. 

Wing nodded, watching as Drift sprayed the lines.  Even Ratchet had pronounced Wing in astonishing shape, but he’d lain idle for ages, offline. Systems degraded, oils dried up, parts rusted or stiffened in disuse.  Wing had been patient enough through the days of diagnostics, amused and curious, but Drift could see, day by day, how much lying in a medibay berth weighed on the jet. “It will be good,” Wing said, “to walk again.” He craned his head, watching as the cleanser jetted over his exposed components.

Drift looked up, the rag hovering over the oiled mechanisms. “Hurt?”

Wing shook his head. “Cold, that’s all.”

Drift studied his face, figuring that if anyone would demur about pain, it would be Wing. And himself. 

“I’m fine, Drift. I would tell you, I promise.”

Drift grinned, feeling caught out. “All right.”  He bent over the expose leg mechanisms, trying hard not to think about the fact that this was Wing’s thigh, spread open before him, and Wing’s heat washing against him and a hand’s length away was Wing’s interface hatch…. How did medics do this? He shook his head, and swiped down the cables with the rag, spreading the oil, lifting the small beads of microcorrosion. Helping. Fixing. 

“Drift,” Wing said, his tone warm and soft and for a moment Drift’s attention went into a fantasy, of Wing pulling him close, those satiny mouthplates seeking his ardently. “When will I get to see the others?”

The warm fantasy shattered like glass. “…others.”

“Dai Atlas? Axe? Cloudburst?”  Wing wriggled upwards. “Where are they?”

Drift felt a coldness, like an icy mist passing through him. How had he not thought?  Because…he’d blocked it out himself, shoving aside the loss of the City, clinging onto Wing’s bright hope instead.  “…we don’t know.” He forced himself to look up, to meet the optics, to see the confusion and loss hit Wing. It felt like an obligation, not to look away.

“Then…how?”  The voice was soft, as though knowing the question, and its answer, would hurt them both.

“The city was abandoned when we got there. There was only you. In the crypt.”

“Abandoned.”  The word was a ghost’s lament, that even dead, he had been left behind. It made logical sense, but it burned, in the inner senses, those capable of feeling pain and grief and loneliness, those for which there were no mechanical cognates, mere emanations of the spark and mind.

“We’re trying to find them, Wing.” Small consolation, like a handful of brass disks in exchange for a city of gold.

Wing sank back, and Drift could feel the trembling through the frame, overwhelmed. His optics flew around the medibay, seeking Ratchet or First Aid or anyone who could help undo this thing he’d done. But he couldn’t alter the truth, couldn’t ‘heal’ reality.  Wing lay back against the berth’s surface, optics lidding under the strain of grief. 

Dead, Drift thought. He looked dead, except for the trembling he could barely feel under his fingers, the microsprayer forgotten in his hands. And the thought horrified him: had they done Wing harm by bringing him back? Was his selfishness so monstrous?

He dropped the sprayer, the nozzle thunking against the berth, the rag in his other hand falling soundlessly as he stood up, leaning over Wing. “Wing,” he breathed, and all the weight of pain and responsibility quashing his voice. He couldn’t even think of what to say: words of comfort? Apology? Nothing seemed right, nothing in the whole universe, as long as Wing lay, his face in that deadly rictus of pain. He couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear that he’d been the cause of it. He dropped down, his weight onto Wing’s chassis, pulling the jet into an embrace, burying his coward’s head against Wing’s shoulder. Drift felt Wing’s arms slide under his, and wrap around his chassis, clinging to him as fiercely as Drift held him.

As they embraced each other, in a mute, feeble attempt at comfort, Drift pledged, silently, fiercely, that he would fill this loss for Wing. He would be everything to Wing and Wing would be his everything.

He only hoped it would be enough.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brainstorm sows doubt in Perceptor that it turns out are well founded.
> 
> Possibly the most flowery purple sticky porn ever written. At least recently.

“Going to check on your latest experiment?”  Through some magic, Brainstorm made what could have been an innocent and harmless question seem barbed.  He swung into step beside Perceptor outside the refectory.

“Wing is not an experiment,” Perceptor said, evenly.  He didn’t know what he’d call the mech, but not an experiment.  That was..it was Brainstorm’s way of thinking, the kind of thinking that kept creating weapons, far away from the actual effects of war. A kind of thinking he once had.

“That’s just semantics,” Brainstorm said, with an airy wave.  “Kind of seems like a dumb thing to do, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“I do mind,” Perceptor said, coldly, drawing himself up. “A mech is alive today who wasn’t before. That seems anything but dumb.”

“Eh, a bit against your self interest, don’t you think?”

Perceptor bridled, grateful for the control that kept his face impassive.  “I don’t see how.”

“I imagine not,” Brainstorm said.  “Just saying, I think it’s pretty dumb to create a rival for yourself.”

“Rival?”

“Oh come on. You can’t possibly be that blind. Surely you’ve seen how Drift moons over that Wing.”

“They are getting reacquainted,” Perceptor said, but even he heard the wobble of doubt in his voice. Drift had been…engrossed in the white jet. Too closely?

“Yeah, if you want to call it that.” Brainstorm rolled his optics.  “Cute euphemism and all.”

Perceptor felt his lip plates crush against each other, hating that Brainstorm’s barbs were hitting home, like rounds shot directly into his insecurities. He hated that he still _had_ insecurities. 

“Sorry. I just hate bad science.” Brainstorm slowed, turning down toward the gravlifts to the lab.

Another slap, almost wild. “It is not bad science,” Perceptor said, hearing the current of anger in his voice, and knowing Brainstorm was getting the rise he wanted out of him. And not caring. A mech was alive because of him. And Drift was happy: happier than Perceptor had ever seen him.

“If you say so.” That concession that gave nothing away. “Just, like I said, pretty dumb with that whole selfless sacrifice act you keep pulling colliding,” he slapped his hands together, “with the fact you did this totally out of ego.”

“Ego.”

“Sure. You want your little ex-Decepticon to be grateful to you for it, right?” Brainstorm poked the gravlift button.

True. Too true. And in Brainstorm’s vocalizer it sounded vile. 

The gravlift arrived, the door chiming as it opened. “Thing is, most of us are honest about doing what you did, Perceptor. It’s called buying a prostitute.” A malicious glint in his optics as he stepped into the lift, giving a little wave as the door closed between them.

[***]

“So,” Drift said, sweeping his arm around the habitation suite. “I thought you might like these quarters.”  He pointed to the window. “You can see the stars. I thought you might, you know, want to.”  Now that he was saying it, he wasn’t sure why he’d thought that. Just, Wing without the confinement of a city ceiling over him.  Wing, on a blanket of stars. It seemed like something meant to be.

“It’s wonderful,” Wing said, turning from the window, smiling, with only a shadow of sadness haunting his mouth.  “The last time I was on a ship we were leaving Cybertron. This seems… the same and yet different.”

“It is different,” Drift said, earnestly. “We’re saving Cybertron, a Cybertron coming back to life.” He hadn’t thought that would be Wing’s last memory of space. It felt like a vast miscalculation, like he’d made a mistake.  How could he think Wing wanted to be facing the stars, night after night? “I-I can get you other quarters, inboard, if you like?”

Wing tilted his helm, puzzled. “No, no. Drift. This is fine. Lovely.”

Drift teetered on wanting to believe him, and feeling Wing would white lie to him, wrapped in nobility, not wanting to hurt him over such a silly thing.  “Well, uh, if there’s nothing else, I’ll just go.”  And leave you here before I make things worse, he added mentally, crossing to the door.

“Do you have to go?”

It was a moment Drift had been waiting for without knowing he had been waiting. He felt everything shift around him, like a sudden shift of depth-of-field around him, everything glowing and gorgeous.

“No,” he said, the word already a yearning sigh, reaching through the air between them in fine, shy tendrils. He turned in the doorway: Wing was standing almost like a figure in a dream hands outstretched, so real and alive he seemed to glow as though the force of life in him was so strong it exceeded the mere margins of his body. “I don’t have to go.”

“Please don’t,” Wing whispered, his own voice hushed as under the sacred weight of the moment. “At least not yet.” There was a current under his words under the moment, like a separate engine vibrating around them, between them, through them. 

The door sighed closed behind Drift, closing them in together. It seemed a sign, or all the sign Drift needed. He seemed borne forward, his arms finding homes around Wing’s shoulders, his mouth parting, halfway sucking in a vent of air, breathing in the moment, tasting the air in a mute plea for a kiss.

It was a joining that the universe itself seemed to want to happen, seemed to hold itself apart, drawing away the crowding hems of all of its problems and pettinesses, to leave them only with each other, rich with history and unsaid things. Drift’s frame trembled, whetted by ages of regret; Wing’s by what he had always yearned for between them, tempered by loneliness: Drift’s aged and bittersweet; Wing’s sweet and fresh and trembling. They were past and present, regret and joy, sparking together as their mouths met.

It was a beautiful moment: Time itself seemed to spin around them, racing and yet still, and the sob Drift felt burst in his throat was transmuted into a soft keen of want.

Wing’s hands tightened on his shoulders, enough to keep him close, so that he could feel the pulse of Wing’s spark through the armor, throbbing through their EM fields, which had wefted together in a seamless join as though they were one.

“Wing,” he managed, his voice still a note of desire, interlaced with disbelief that this was real, that this was truly happening. And the word was a plea, in his voice, trembling through his body: a name and a summoning, and neither of them thought, neither of them seemed to move, but they were suddenly on the berth, bodies tangling together, thigh against thigh, mouth against mouth.

If Drift had planned this, if he’d thought about it consciously, he knew he’d have stumbled: there would have been some awkward fumbling, snagging a finger on Wing’s interface hatch, or crushing one of the beautiful flightpanels under a clumsy elbow.  But this seemed…ordained, and everything flowed, as they surrendered to it, like some beautiful dream, too real to be real.  His mouth breathed against Wing’s, his hands stroking, desperate but delicate, on Wing’s back, and his spike, somehow, found Wing’s valve, as they lay side by side, as equals, neither top nor bottom, both giving, both taking, the moment binding them together like a tapestry of emotion and sensation.

There was no word for what they did: interfacing seemed so crude and technical and unbeautiful. It was a sacred thing, beyond words, beyond everything except the surging of their bodies, both of them straining for union, for the release that would bind them, for an all too brief moment, in an ecstasy too powerful to bear.


	5. Chapter 5

It wasn’t until his chrono alarm sounded that Perceptor realized he had been awake the entire night. Bad enough that Brainstorm’s words were a subtle and spreading poison.  Bad enough that he hadn’t seen Drift—or Wing—in the medibay.  But Drift hadn’t come to his quarters, when he really, really wanted him there, when he could really use the comfort, reassurance, normalcy.

He’d wrestled with comming Drift, for cycles. It felt like it would be too possessive, too clingy, giving in too much to Brainstorm’s goads. And then the hour had stretched late and it would have seemed pathetic and he’d allowed himself the petty indulgence of checking the duty roster. Maybe, he’d thought, Drift had night duty and just had forgotten to tell Perceptor. It wouldn’t be the first time.  Drift wasn’t thoughtless, well, not in a bad way. He was just unused to having anyone care about him.

Still, it had taken two cycles of debate before he’d allowed himself to comm the duty channel, and then stammering his way through an awkward conversation as Red Alert had answered instead.

Which meant…he had to be with Wing. And the thought ate at him, all the more for the fact that he should be happy. Isn’t that why he’d saved the white jet? Shouldn’t he be happy Drift was happy? Shouldn’t that be enough?

It wasn’t. Not even close.

He was just convincing himself to get up, that lying on his berth, blinking at a blank wall, would do nothing to resolve things, when his door whispered open.   Drift stepped in, his footfalls light, as though expecting Perceptor to be asleep. He stopped when he saw the blue optics on him, moving forward with a more confident stride, a smile spreading over his face. “Hey,” Drift said, lowering one hip to rest on the berth next to Perceptor.

“Hey,” Perceptor echoed, numbly.  He could smell the tang of interfacing from here, the sweetsharp smell of friction-heated transfluid and electron cascade. It was as if every one of his suspicions came to life.

“You have duty soon?”

“No.”

“Good.” Drift stretched himself out along the berth, throwing one arm around Perceptor’s shoulders.

Perceptor could feel the purr of Drift’s contented engines against him. He wanted to push Drift away, to demand an explanation, maybe rail at him, show him how hurt he’d been.

But…why? Drift had never made any sort of pledge to him. In fact, Drift had offered, and Perceptor had refused, found himself unready for the magnitude of the trust.

This, at least, was freely offered. This at least was honest and true, not motivated by guilt or pressure. It was real, and he let Drift curl against him, burying his head against the red spaulder, trying not to think who else might have been curled against Drift, who else’s heat he might be feeling.

Drift gave a contented little sound, wriggling closer, and Perceptor felt a thread of want tingle through him.  Drift radiated a kind of dangerous allure,  that stirred something deep in Perceptor, called to the surface the darker things in him: wanting to take and to be taken, a force that rippled under his unworthiness.

He slid a hand, tentative, down Drift’s frame, reaching to slide over Drift’s thighs, fingers tracing the lip of his cuisses, before stroking the thumb against Drift’s interface hatch.

Drift gave a pleased, catlike purr, wriggling closer.  But Perceptor felt no flickering of the EM field against him, only a post-coital, sated purr. “Drift,” he whispered.

Drift gave a mumble of acknowledgement.

“Tonight. Can we…?” He couldn’t bring himself to say it, and he writhed, hoping the heat from his frame spoke enough.

A rumbling purr from Drift, an idle, drowsy hand reaching back to stroke along his thigh. “Mmmm. Yes.” And then Drift shifted his hips forward, blocking his interface hatch from Perceptor's probing hands. 

It hurt. It felt like rejection. And he knew he should be happy for Drift, and embarrassed by his own selfishness.  Still, it hurt, a burning sort of shame, so his hand subsided, and he let Drift curl against him, clinging to the promise, ventilation cycling down to recharge and tried to convince himself it was enough.

[***]

“And you are this ‘Wing’.” Ultra Magnus’s voice circle the name warily, the way he used to pronounce known aliases. 

“I am.” A smile that was supposed to, he decided, be friendly.

He did not have time to be ‘friendly’. This was an intake assessment, nothing more. Ultra Magnus’s supraorbital ridge twitched, as the mech slipped, unbidden, into the seat across from Ultra Magnus’s. “And you were from Theophany.”

“Cybertron,” Wing corrected. “All our kind is.” 

Ultra Magnus glowered. “I see,” he said, dryly. “And your most recent residence, then.” If Wing said the Medibay, he’d know exactly what sort of wisecracker he was dealing with.

“New Crystal City,” Wing said, smoothly. “Most recently in a crypt.”

“I am aware of that…detail.” And he fully intended to investigate it. The sole survivor of a ruined city? It was beyond suspicious. 

“And you are,” he said, moving on with effort, “a Decepticon sympathizer.”

“I sympathize with anyone who is a victim of this awful war.”

“Awful.”

“You don’t see it as such? It’s destroyed our planet, our culture, and how much damage has been done to those few who do survive?” The gold optics studied him, intently. 

“The war was necessary.”

“Was it? Or was it simply inevitable from two factions who built a false base of power based on the threat of violence?”

“You have an…interesting perspective on history, Wing.”

Wing inclined his head as though that were a compliment.

“My mission,” Ultra Magnus continued, “is to establish your position here.”

“Cybertronian,” Wing said, with a firm nod.  “As are all of us.”

“I meant, in terms of your threat to our security.” This felt like a conversation that was happening on two perpendicular planes. It was unsettling.

“I am no threat to your security,” Wing said, placidly, showing his palms. “How could I be?”

“That is my mission to evaluate,” Ultra Magnus said.

“Ultra Magnus, the only mech I even know is Drift.”

Yes. Exactly.  He frowned. “The ex-Decepticon.”

“Yes.” The gold optics weighed on his, steadily, and suddenly he felt that under the soft words and the graceful movements there was a core of steel. “Ultra Magnus. I give you my word of honor: I mean no harm. But,” he said, rising as smoothly as he’d sat, “I will accept whatever restrictions you deem necessary to feel safe. Is there anything else?”

“Not right now.” No, Ultra Magnus thought, but there likely will be. He didn’t like being treated so cavalierly.  “But I advise you to stay out of secure areas.”

A solemn nod. “That will be my first step in building your trust.”

[***]

Drift could barely feel the floor under his footplates, his only attention focused on Wing, beside him, and the looks from the others as he showed Wing around: curious, envious. He wanted to reach over and place a hand on the swaying skirting panels, something that laid a claim, however small, a tiny sign of protective possession. Wing was curious, endlessly, about the ship and the crew, introducing himself to everyone, even thanking Brainstorm for his quick thinking.

That had been something, watching Brainstorm, for once, stammering without a sharp comeback. It seemed even he was a little dazzled.

It was easy to be dazzled by Wing: he seemed to glow with a sort of supernal pureness, translucent and ethereal, as if he weren’t really part of this world, but something almost transcendent. Drift couldn’t shake that, even as Wing coded the door to his quarters, flashing Drift a shy smile that invited him in without words.

Drift followed, his processor fuzzing with memories of last night, as though the place were still thick with their passion.

“Thank you,” Wing said, softly. “For spending all day showing me around.”

“It was…I wanted to,” Drift said. He’d wanted nothing more than to spend as much time as possible with Wing, as though parched for his presence after such a long absence.  It had physically hurt to stand outside the door during his interview with Ultra Magnus, every instant feeling like a moment stolen from him.

“I wanted it, too,” Wing said, his optics gold and beautiful and impossible to look away from. “Everything’s so strange to me here.” He reached with one hand, fingers playing over Drift’s red spaulder. “Even you.”

Drift’s hand covered Wing’s, his own optics burning with emotion. “I’m the same, Wing. I’m the one you saved.”  That’s all he wanted to be. He pulled the hand closer, kissing the black, glossy knuckles.

Wing’s optics coruscated, almost liquidly, and he stepped closer, replacing his hand with his own mouth, kissing Drift with the air of someone quenching some deep thirst. “And you saved me,” he whispered, after a moment pulling away, his optics warm on Drift’s face, before he slid, gracefully, to his knees, his mouth tracing an intricate pattern down Drift’s chassis, an elongated kiss of reverence, his palms sketching over Drift’s body, thumbs sliding over his hip scabbards, the mouth a sudden, hot nuzzle on Drift’s interface hatch.

Drift could feel his spike surge behind the metal, his systems spinning. He stumbled back against the wall, gasping for breath.

A glossa, a little tongue of heat, traced the seam of his interface hatch, asking, importuning.  “Wing,” he groaned, palms flat on the wall, as he heard his spike cover click behind his interface hatch, belying any composure he might have had. His spike gave a dulled thud against the interface hatch, the surface nodes sending shocks of hard pleasure through Drift’s body from the impact.

Wing purred, licking over the panel, right over the spike, his hands juddering down Drift’s thighs.  “I want to,” Wing murmured to the white metal.

Drift sucked a vent of air, nodding shakily, not trusting himself to words. Wing caught the nod, deftly opening the hatch, and pausing for a long moment as Drift’s spike jutted from its housing, just to look. Drift trembled under the jet’s gaze, his lust palpable, visible between them. And then Wing bent forward, and took his spike in his mouth.

Drift groaned, fingertips scraping at the wall behind him, as Wing’s mouth closed over his spike, sucking at the tip, before sliding down the shaft, optics lidding with a blissful desire.  He could feel Wing’s EM field, a rich tingling fuzz against his thighs, the clever glossa tracing the shapes of his spike’s plates. “Wing,” he breathed.

Wing gave a contented, sighing sort of hum, his palms sliding over Drift’s thighs, as he began working his way up and down the spike.

Drift shuddered, unable to tear his optics away from the sight of the beautiful jet, optics lidded, his entire face rapt with concentration, intent on bringing Drift pleasure, taking joy from Drift’s shivering limbs, the ragged vents of Drift’s cooling system, the prickling charge over his glossa.  It was something Drift had never had before: he’d interfaced with Perceptor, but it had always been so serious, so…much more like he was owed.  This was Wing, and there was a kind of wild joy under it all, Wing’s own ventilations matching Drift’s, aroused and alive.

Drift didn’t last long: he knew he wouldn’t.  He was too aroused from the accelerant of others’ hot gazes, from the jet walking beside him, sweet and glowing, and this, physical and mental and emotional, a conflagration of everything Wing was and meant. He squirmed his hips, moaning openly: Wing deserved to know how much Drift wanted him, how close Wing drove him to losing control.  And still, Wing moved, in the same, slow, oceanic tempo Drift remembered from last night.  Drift’s body protested, wanting it faster, harder, wanting sharp thrusting but Wing kept the tempo slow, steady, building charge in resonating waves of rising sensation, sparkling over his sensor net.

The overload seemed to shake its way free from his very core, his entire body vibrating with it, knees nearly buckling, his vocalizer’s whine rising to a shuddering roar.  And Wing moved, still, in three slower, languorous pulls, each drawing a spill of transfluid from Drift’s spike, scalding and sweet and shivering him to his very core. 

Wing sat back on his knees, red stabilizers folded flat to the ground, tilting his gaze upward as he slid off the spike one last time, opening his mouth to let his glossa trail along the underside of the spike’s head, before flicking over the very tip. His mouthplates curved into a smile at the gasp, the way Drift’s body jolted at the touch, his own optics greedy on Drift’s ecstasy-wracked frame.

Drift moved, hauling Wing to his feet, mashing his mouth to Wing’s, stilling his shuddering, heated frame against Wing’s coolness, tasting the sweet tang of his own transfluid and lubricant in Wing’s kiss, like the taste of joy. He had no thought for anything other than Wing; everything else fell away, grey and unimportant, and only Wing seemed to have color and texture and a light so bright he wanted to blind himself in it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drift returns to Perceptor, as he'd promised.

Drift woke, cycles later, curled on the berth around Wing, the last of the heavy bliss seeming to shred off him, tearing him awake. Something seemed to pulse hard against him, on the edges of his awareness. Something he should remember.

…Perceptor. He’d given his word. He promised.

Drift pushed up, one palm posted on the berth. It wasn’t too late. He could still make it.  Perceptor would understand. Things happened.

He disentangled himself from Wing, pausing just for a moment to drink in the jet’s slumber, serene and at peace. It made him feel like he’d done something big and important, making Wing happy, something good and pure.

He tore himself away, with one final look at the threshold, as though taking sustenance from the sight, before he moved swiftly down the corridor, toward Perceptor’s quarters.

The room was dark and quiet. Drift slipped in, catching sight of the lean red frame, stretched on the berth, one hand flung up to cover his face.  A glimmer of a grin: Drift could work with this.

He eased onto the berth beside Perceptor, sliding one thigh over Perceptor’s belly, nuzzling under the upraised arm for Perceptor’s sleep-slack mouth. He felt a twitch, saw the hand tighten into a startled ball for a klik, before the hand moved.  Drift was already grinning down into the mismatched blue optics.  “Hey,” Drift said.

“Hey,” Perceptor responded, voice gravelly with recharge. “I thought you’d…gotten busy.” The tilt of his optics told Drift that wasn’t entirely true. He’d thought Drift had forgotten.

Drift almost had, and an inward thing curled like a withering leaf, bolstering his determination to make things right. “I’m here now,” he said, and slicked a hand down Perceptor’s side. “If you’re still interested.”

A faint glimmer of a smile, Perceptor’s hands coming up to wrap around Drift’s body.  “Yes.” As if he could ever not be interested in Drift, whatever crumb the other mech chose to hand him. The last drowsy vestiges of sleep faded into a pleasurable blur, feeling Drift’s EM field buzzing softly over his, the sleek enamel of his armor over Perceptor’s hip.  He’d asked, Drift was here. What more could he want?

Drift’s mouth found his for a light, tasting kiss, before sliding down to his throat, Drift’s glossa deft and clever against his exposed cables.  Perceptor let himself arch into the touches, his own hands roaming Drift’s back.

And then it hit him, where Drift must have been: with Wing again. He could feel the slight strange vestige in the other’s EM field, he could taste it in the kiss.  His kindling desire seemed to squelch off. 

No, he told himself: Drift’s here now. Drift came, leaving him to be with you. That is what matters. That should be what matters. Drift left Wing for you. 

But something dark and glittering green, deep in his belly, seemed to turn, like a green serpent, and his arms closed greedily around the other’s chassis.  Drift’s engine revved under his touch, eager and familiar.

See, Perceptor? he chided himself.  Nothing wrong. 

Drift’s hips ground over Perceptor’s, as he pulled just barely away from the kiss, one hand moving to stroke Perceptor’s cheek. “How do you want me?”

Perceptor’s hands clutched under Drift’s aft, possessive and forceful, his thighs spreading out underneath him. “Take me,” he said, his voice a soft challenge. Take me, he thought. Own me, possess me, make me yours.  I’m yours. Me. Not Wing. 

Drift smiled down at him, dipping in for a sharp kiss, his free hand sliding between them to release their equipment, not even pretending to hide the aroused growl in his vocalizer. Perceptor could feel the other’s excitement, a cool blaze over his EM field, the sudden press of tingling energy against Perceptor’s valve cover—Drift’s spike, eager and ready.

Perceptor wanted this: to be wanted, to be able to see, feel, hear Drift’s desire for him. More than the physical release, he needed this. 

He let his gaze drop down between their bodies, catching the glisten of Drift’s lubricant slick spike between his thighs, letting his optics trail up the other’s belly, as his hands roamed the backs of Drift’s thighs. So familiar and yet he never tired of it. 

Drift pushed in, slowly, making the entrance last, letting Perceptor feel the contours of the spike—the swell of the head, the swoop down to the shaft’s complicated plates.  Drift gave a purring hum, sinking himself into the valve, as Perceptor’s thighs wrapped around him.  He posted his hand on the berth beside Perceptor’s shoulder, breaking the kiss as he began rocking his pelvis, slowly at first.  Perceptor moaned, tipping himself up, opening into the movements, feeling the cool slickness of his valve begin to heat from the friction.

He let his optics and hands roam over Drift, tracing the familiar shapes, feeling the enamel and metal and hoses and cables under his sensitive hands, his mouth parting as Drift’s mouth parted, panting in desire.

Drift’s tempo picked up, thrusting, one hand hooking down to catch a knee, pulling it up, leaning forward to loop a wanton glossa over Perceptor’s scope. Perceptor felt shivers of desire radiate through the spike, electric ripples through his entire sensornet.

“Want you,” Drift murmured, his voice hoarse with desire, his ventilations gusting over Perceptor’s frame. He was close, closer than Perceptor, and Perceptor could feel the strain as Drift fought to hold off the overload, driving himself into the valve, air hissing past his dentae.

Perceptor felt the charge surge against him, pushing at him like a frothing wave and then…seem to ebb, fading off the verge of overload. He felt his mouth settle into a frown, sliding his hands down Drift’s body. Drift was beautiful, Drift was here, and he could feel Drift’s body, feel the spike sliding in his valve, see the wanton lust on the other’s face. Everything he wanted. Everything....

But…he couldn’t.  Every time charge seemed to build, instants from tipping into release, it seemed to ebb, like a herd of skittish animals turning aside at a cliff. He squeezed the calipers in his valve, snugging against the spike. Drift gave a surprised gasp, gritting his dentae, redoubling the force of his thrusts, pistoning against Perceptor.

And it was suddenly awful, and Perceptor wanted nothing other than for this to stop: he knew abruptly that he wasn’t going to overload. Not now, no matter what Drift did. It just wasn’t happening.  Something stood between him and overload, like an invisible, impenetrable barrier. And Drift’s determination somehow made it worse, made it one-sided, Drift not enjoying it for his own sake but trying to please him, turning desire into effort.

It felt like effort, and his attempt to force himself to overload was definitely effort. 

“Stop,” Perceptor whispered, his voice crushed with shame, his hands stilling on Drift’s shoulders. “Please.  I’m just…tired, I think.”

“You sure?” Drift said, slowing, brow furrowed in concern. “I could--?”  His gaze skimmed down their conjoined bodies, offering.

Perceptor shook his head. No, the last thing he wanted was more self-consciousness, was to lie on his back ,feeling Drift’s glossa, Drift’s attention, circling his valve, unable to bring him to completion. “No, just lie with me.”

Drift gave a nod, mouth moving in something not quite a pout, as he settled his weight on Perceptor’s frame. “I kept you waiting. I should have come earlier. I’m sorry.”

Oh, Primus, Perceptor thought, miserably, don’t apologize. Please don’t make it worse than it already is. “Don’t apologize,” he said, feeling pitiful, beyond pitiful.  “Please. It’s just…like I said. I’m tired. I’ve probably been overworking.”

He saw Drift seize onto it, uncertainly but gratefully. It probably wasn’t that much of a stretch: Perceptor had been logging long hours in the lab. “Perceptor,” he said, shyly chiding, “Please, take care of yourself.”

He gave a small nod. “I will.” 

Drift’s mouth shifted. “Can—do you want me to stay?”  He seemed half-ready to leave, his weight lifting off Perceptor’s body. 

Perceptor’s hands clutched at him, pathetically, he thought, tugging Drift back down onto the berth. Drift’s spike slid free from his valve, Perceptor repressing a wince at the sudden soreness, the contrast between the charge built up in Drift’s spike and the numbness of his own equipment. “Please,” he said.

Drift nodded, settling into the crook of his arm, planting a warm, worried kiss on Perceptor’s chestplate.  “Get some rest,” Drift said, drowsily.

Perceptor nodded, forcing himself still, feeling Drift relax into recharge against him, with that honest, animal ability Drift had always had, to sink into any physical comfort.  He held himself still, but he inwardly wormed in envy and despair, the night stretching long around him, body and spirit aching and unfulfilled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the content of this chapter. It's setting things up for the future. I hate to admit (tmi time) I've been where Perceptor is in this chapter. It is an awful self-blamy feeling that is like a gravity well almost impossible to climb out of.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PLOT.

Wing perched on the exam table, feet kicking the air as he looked around the Medibay. It was nice here: clean and tidy and it had that sort of pleasant hum around it of a place run with discipline and order. Dai Atlas, he thought, would have approved.

“You waiting for someone?”  Ratchet, Wing recalled, frowned over at him.

“I need to get my spark circuitry checked, I think?” Wing said. “Perceptor told me to meet him here today.”  He gave an easy shrug, the kind that told Ratchet he was used to things all just working out.

“Does he remember this?” It didn’t seem quite like Perceptor to forget.

“He’s possibly gotten busy. I can wait,” Wing said. “it’s not like I have any other calls on my time.” It felt a little strange. In Crystal City, there’d always been something to do, healthy work, with friends.

“You’re taking up space in my Medibay,” Ratchet said, pointedly.

Wing blinked, looking around the bay, with plenty of open berths. “I’m…sorry? Is there a better place for me to wait?”

Ratchet frowned at the glance. “That’s not the point.”

“Oh.” Wing didn’t understand, but he knew enough manners to know he was upsetting the other. “Is there—what can I do to help?” 

“Help.” Ratchet snorted, as though the word was completely alien to him. “You can help by staying out of my Medibay unless you’re sick.”

Wing scooted off the berth, nodding. “All right.  Could you at least, when he shows up, tell Perceptor I am ready when he is?”

“I’m here.” Perceptor’s lean shape stood in the doorway. “I’m sorry, Ratchet. I figured the atmosphere here was a bit less unpleasant than my lab.”

A snort. “True enough.” 

“Also, if I needed your help, it would be safer to have you nearby.”

A noncommittal sound, and Ratchet bent over a rack of tools, pointedly nearby. Wing couldn’t hide the smile: almost exactly like Dai Atlas. Gruff on the exterior, but wanting the best. 

Wing turned to Perceptor, who gestured him back on the berth.  Wing settled on his back, head turned to watch the red mech. Something seemed to be upsetting him, the black hands moving,  restlessly, as though unable to settle down, and the mouth was set in a too-tense line. “Are you unwell? We can do this another time?”

“I’m fine,” Perceptor said, bending swiftly to open a drawer underneath the berth. “And we can do this now, if you’re ready.”

Wing looked at him, puzzled, but well, it seemed he didn’t want to talk, shutting down conversation. “All right.” 

A tap on his chassis armor.  “Unlock. Please.”

Wing nodded, disengaging the armor locks, letting the plates float away on their hydraulics, exposing his spark.  The silence seemed awkward to him, too long and strained. “I’d ask how you revived me, but I’m not sure I’d understand,” he said, quietly.

“It’s technical,” Perceptor said. “I imagine First Aid would be able to explain it more clearly, should you want to know.”

Another shut down.  Wing nodded, falling silent.

Perceptor worked for several kliks, his gaze only going from the small tray of tools to Wing’s opened chassis.  Wing lay still. Normally he was serene, but there was something un-quiet in Perceptor’s demeanor that unsettled Wing. He couldn’t help but feel he was at the root of it, but he couldn’t figure out how to verify, much less fix it.

“Are you in pain? Discomfort?”

Wing shook his head, belatedly realizing Perceptor couldn’t see the gesture. “No. No pain.”

A grunt of assent.  

“I never properly thanked you,” Wing said, softly. 

Perceptor shook his head. “Not necessary.”

“It is,” Wing said. “You gave me my life, Perceptor. You gave me…everything.”

Perceptor’s hands went still over Wing’s exposed spark chamber, his optics seeking Wing’s, strangely liquid.  “Enjoy it. Please. If you must thank me.” The words seemed hard for him to say. 

Wing subsided for a moment, brow furrowing under his helm.  “Perceptor?”

The mouth moved, tight and almost in pain. “I didn’t do it for you,” Perceptor said, harsh and hurt.  “I did it for—“

“Drift,” Wing finished. “I know. It doesn’t change that I am grateful to be alive.”

“You have Drift,” Perceptor said, before he bit back the words, as though he’d said far too much.

He hadn’t said too much: he’d spoken the truth as he saw it, Wing realized. “He is not mine to have,” Wing said. “Though I am grateful for what he shares with me.”

“He’s chosen.”

“Has he?” Wing caught at Perceptor’s wrist for attention. “Must he?”

[***]

“So.”  Rodimus folded his arms over his chassis.

Drift settled into the chair. “He’s important.” 

Rodimus gave a knowing smirk. “At least to part of you.” His optics flicked down to Drift’s lap.  “Saw you coming from his quarters last night.”

“Yes.” A twitch of his mouth. “But I wasn’t talking about that.”

“Of course not.”  Rodimus toyed with a datarod, waiting.

“He’s from Crystal City,” Drift said.

“He was dead. He doesn’t know what happened.”

The words struck Drift like a slap. It was just Rodimus’s way, he thought. He didn’t mean anything by it. “I know. But he knows about Crystal City, as it was. The Circle could lead us to the Knights, but Wing might know something as well.” 

“He might.” Rodimus shrugged. “Ultra Magnus doubts it.”

“Ultra Magnus doubted Theophany even existed until we arrived there.” No. No, this was not a time to choose to side with Ultra Magnus. This was not a time to choose sides, period.  Drift felt himself getting agitated.  Why couldn’t they see that Wing mattered?

Rodimus sighed, that forced sigh of someone trying, with great effort, to remain patient. “Drift. I know he means a lot to you. I do. And no one’s  begrudging you that.” A wry grin. “Except Ultra Magnus and he begrudges everything. Probably even grudges.”

“Rodimus—“

“Look. I’m just saying, it’s fine that he’s here.  And he’s welcome to stay, if only for your sake. But he’s not exactly one of us, right?”

Drift’s face went cold and hard. “One of us…as in Cybertronian.”

“Drift, come on, don’t be like that. You know what I mean.”

“No. I don’t.”  He couldn’t hide the truculence in his tone; he didn’t want to. He couldn’t believe this was happening. After all their talk about equality and the war being over, and Rodimus was still holding on to the old biases?

“Look. He’s welcome to stay, but, well, it’s like Cyclonus.”

“Cyclonus. You’re not seriously going to compare Wing and Cyclonus.”  Cyclonus still stung, that scene in the interrogation room burning like shame.

“They have certain similarities.”

“They both fly,” Drift said, hotly. “We could use a good flyer. Someone reliable.” Someone….not Whirl, really.

“They’re neither of them Autobots.” Rodimus looked a little miffed that he’d had to spell it out.

“I wasn’t, either.”  Drift tilted forward, frowning.  

“You’re different,” Rodimus said.

Drift shook his head. “I’m different _because_ of Wing.” How could Rodimus not see that?

“Drift. This isn’t about you. I’m just asking you to have a little, you know, perspective.”

Drift felt his ventilations huff, tight in his chassis, stifling the spike of anger. He knew Wing didn’t deserve this. Wing could help, if only they asked. Injustice had always bothered him, always stoked some restless flame. And this was injustice. And what was worse: Wing would accept it. He would bow his head and understand.

Drift could do neither. He stood up, the chair scraping against the floor behind him. “I have perspective. I know Wing. And you’re making a huge mistake.”

“Drift.”

Drift shook his head, feeling his mouth settle into a long-unfamiliar scowl. “No.” No. This was over. He didn’t want to talk anymore.  He knew if he did, he’d say something he would regret.

“Where are you going? We’re not done.”

“We are done,” Drift said, tightly. “Going to…I don’t know. Just,…think.” He hoped it would help.


	8. Chapter 8

Wing settled himself nervously on the couch in the ‘dayroom’, as they called it, trying not to be too obviously overwhelmed by the crowd of mechs around him, staring at him. He offered a bright smile.

“So you’re from Crystal City.”  Chromedome leaned closer, studying him. It was strange to see a mech with a hidden face—so many of them here, really.  Wing remembered the time before the war when no one felt the need to go masked unless it was required for their job. And no one in Crystal City had, for millions of years.

“Yes.”

“What’s with the swords, huh? You and Drift?”  Tailgate tilted his head, indicating one of his blades. 

“Swords?” Wing gave an easy grin. This he could talk about, and maybe get them to understand a bit about how Crystal City worked and what it was. Had been. He thrust the thought aside. “Using a blade means you are putting yourself at the same danger  as the one you’re attacking, equitable risk.”

“That’s not a good way to win a war,” Chromedome said, sagely.

“We weren’t trying to fight a war, merely to survive.”

“Survive.”  A lanky one, Whirl, propped in the corner gave a shrug. “Lame.”

“Perhaps?” Wing gave an easy smile. “We daren’t aim higher.”

“You ran away.”

“We left.” 

“You gave up.” Whirl glowered. It was a strange thing to see on the other mech’s face.

“We left,” Wing repeated, holding the other’s gold optic with his own, “Because to stay would have meant we would have turned into something we’d rather not be.”

Whirl stared for a  long moment, then gave a dismissive click, elbowing himself off the wall. “Right. I’m out of here. You can listen to the white knight here all you want.”    He waited, as though expecting some response, and after a moment, when nothing had happened except a subsidence into silence, he gave a final shrug, and stomped off.

“…should I apologize to him?” Wing said, supraorbital ridges furrowed in worry. 

“Nah,” Chromedome said. “It’s Whirl. He actually enjoys being torqued off.”

“He does?” That seemed…strange.

“Well, he sure sets himself up for it, at any rate,” Chromedome said. “He doesn’t matter. Everyone knows Whirl. We want to know about you.”

“I don’t think I know anything interesting, though,” Wing said. “You’ve seen Theophany. You know more about it than I do.”  The perennial smile seemed to flag.

“You still know a lot,” Rewind said, helpfully. “About the early days of the war.”

“There was so much more in the city,” Wing said, drawing one knee up to his chest, wrapping his hands over the red flash. “The chrestomaths.  Everything we took from Cybertron, copies of all the libraries.” He frowned.  “I’ve heard we no longer have access to it.”

Rewind nodded. “The Galactic Council. They didn’t want us down there in the first place, but now? Yeah, they’re not going to let us anywhere near it any time soon.”

Wing tried to summon the smile again, the kind that was too-obviously trying to mask distress.

“You want me to stop taping?”

Wing shook his head. “No. No, it’s all right. Perhaps it’s fitting that someone should be seen mourning the loss of our City’s promise.”  He wiped under one optic socket with a hand. Dai Atlas.  Axe. The others. Gone. And the City itself, their last legacy, the tangible thing they'd all been working for--ruined and removed. 

Tailgate leaned closer, patting his arm.  “You going to be all right?”

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” Wing said, quietly, his other hand reaching to stroke the Great Sword he had propped beside him on the couch.  “I’m just, well, sometimes it gets to me. All that I’ve missed out on, all that I don’t know. It’s…lonely.”

A pause, and another of his sad smiles and then nothing but the tense silence of Rewind’s camera recording it all.

[***]

Perceptor waited until the little gathering broke up, moving to intercept Wing as he moved to exit the room.  He had the tablet with the results of Wing's scans in his hand: normal, better than he'd expected, really.  Good news, that he somehow dreaded giving. Wing was here. Drift was lost to him. And he should be happy for Drift, but he couldn't see through the dark fog of his own jealousy. Wing, popular and white and cheerful. 

Until.

Wing’s mouth worked as he looked up at the shape blocking his path. “Perceptor,” he said, quietly, uncertain, and they both could feel Drift like an invisible presence between them.

Funny, Perceptor thought, for how long he’d felt the ghost of some stranger named Wing between he and Drift.  And Wing’s presence had just thickened between them like a wall, but now, here, everything was thin and brittle as glass.

“I heard.  What you said,” Perceptor said.  It had somehow cracked through his reserve, through that brittle wall. Lonely? Oh, he understood that, far more than he wanted to admit.  And it had made him realize that even more than himself, all Wing had was Drift, the only, small handhold into familiarity. Perceptor had still had so much of his old world to return to, almost the opposite of Wing—a stranger in a familiar world. 

“It is for the history they’re recording, I think?” Wing looked back to the room he’d just left.

Perceptor caught the white jet’s chin, turning Wing’s face back to his, tugging him closer, bending his head down, his own mouth covering Wing’s just as the mouthplates parted to ask some question.

This was the answer, to whatever the question might have been: a gentle, almost gliding kiss, lipplates sliding over lipplates, silken and tender. Wing’s hand on his chestplate relaxed, the fingertips smoothing over the metal bevel, the mouth parting under Perceptor’s, two aching lonelinesses pooling together.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have some porn!

Drift paused outside Perceptor’s door, collecting himself. He’d gotten a cryptic message from the taller mech, asking him to visit when he was off shift.  He thought back to their last night together and his belly seemed heavy and tense.  He cared so much about Perceptor, he loved him. But the one time he’d told him that, Perceptor had drawn away. And now this.

Delay, he told himself, won’t make it go away. He chimed, his hand clenching over the button in a nervous gesture as the door opened, the brightness of Perceptor’s quarters spilling into the corridor, glinting off the lens of Perceptor’s scope and…

…Wing.

Wing perching nervously on the edge of Perceptor’s berth, hands curled over the rounded rim, his optics golden and worried.

Drift stopped in the doorway. “You. Uh, you wanted to see me?”

New vectors of bad news seemed to fly toward him.

“We did,” Perceptor said.  His face gave away nothing.

Drift’s optics flicked from one to the other, hunting clues. “I-is Wing all right?”

“Fine,” Wing said, hurriedly. “I’m fine.”  He edged forward on the berth, hands knotting themselves in his lap.

“Then. What?”

“Come in,” Perceptor said. His voice was strange, as though trying to suppress some emotion. “Please.” 

Drift frowned, stepping through the threshold. The door closed behind him with a strangely ominous sound.  His brow furrowed. “Look. Tell me. What happened? Why are you both here?”

“You,” Wing said. He rose to his feet, flightpanels rustling back into position behind him. 

“Me.”  Drift took a nervous step back, putting together the pieces he had and not liking—at all—the picture. The picture of himself, mostly: trying to have both, trying to pretend he was being good and noble and virtuous when it was really just the clutching greed of someone who had gone so long without anything that he refused to let go. “I’m…I’m sorry.”  He held up his hands, palms out, as though blocking him from reality, from this moment when he was called to account. “I just…I can’t. I…you both.”  His backstrut hit the door behind him, blocking him in.

“Yes,” Perceptor said. “Us both.”  The mouth quirked strangely, as he approached, his shadow falling over Drift. 

“Please,” Drift said, hating the pleading tone in his voice, afraid to face the consequences of his actions. He’d never meant to hurt either of them, he only wanted them happy.

And himself. If he admitted it, in the core of all his deeds, his actions, there was a seed of selfishness: that he wanted, if nothing else, to be the one to bring them pleasure, make them happy, bring them joy. He could face down a horde of enemies on the battlefield, with a negligent courage. But this…this he almost couldn’t bear. He quailed before them both, his spark feeling torn and rent.

A touch on the red scallop of his spaulder, and he jerked away, startled, to face Wing’s golden optics, the Knight’s hand outstretched.  “Drift,” Wing said, softly. “Listen, please.” 

He nodded, cycling a breath, trying to steady himself in the golden glow of the optics, lowering his hands to his sides. 

Another odd quirk of a smile from Perceptor. “Maybe talking isn’t the best way to explain this,” he said, his voice pitched to Wing.

“I think you may be right,” Wing said, and his hand moved down, catching Drift’s and drawing the mech away from the door, walking backwards with his easy grace, folding to the berth, pulling Drift down onto him. Drift moved numbly, almost woodenly, his body reacting before his mind could process.  Wing pulled him into a kiss, and Drift felt a blue-hot flare of guilt, knowing Perceptor was watching, even as his mouth opened, greedily, into the kiss, his hands sliding down the rounded contours of Wing’s nacelles. 

His glossa found Wing’s, tasting Wing’s sweet breath, his optics dimming, feeling the weight of his body on Wing’s, the jet solid and real underneath him, their EM fields licking together along their bodies. His knee found the gap between Wing’s thighs, pushing them apart.

Wing broke the kiss, stepping it back in a series of smaller kisses, like little ponds of sweet clear water leading to a great, deep lake. “Things come together,” he said, the way he seemed to speak in riddles, to turn a kiss into a statement about the order of the world.

Drift could only answer in an inelegant sound, almost a growl, his mouth finding Wing’s throat, burying himself in the sight and smell and taste of Wing, his hands skimming Wing’s sides, trying to fight where he desperately wanted to go. 

Wing gave a pleased little shiver, tipping his hips up to bump his interface hatch against Drift’s. 

“Wing,” Drift whispered, his voice choked through the flare of pure desire, his spike surging beneath its cover, all too aware how close it was to Wing, and how much it resented the tiny distance. 

“Yes,” Wing said, answering, giving permission.

Drift pushed back, posting up on one arm, his other between their bodies, releasing his spike just as Wing opened his valve.  He held back for a klik, optics glazed with want, seeking out Perceptor, struggling in this last moment to pull back. 

“I want you to,” Perceptor said, settling himself on the berth beside them. “I want to watch.”

Wing’s hand crept between them, shaping itself under Drift’s spike, squeezing around it. Wing gave an aroused little chirr at the push of lubricant against his hand, encouraging, but not forcing.

Drift gave a shuddering ex-vent, lowering his hips to rest against Wing’s, sinking his spike slowly into the valve, his optics dimming in pleasure, feeling the fine mesh pleats spread against his spike’s head, the calipers snugging against him as though welcoming him home.  He arched his spinal struts, pressing home into the valve, their bodies joined only there, as though any more contact would be too much. 

He moved, his spike sliding in the valve, snug and slick, warming quickly against him. Drift opened his optics, looking down at Wing, spread beneath him, the jet’s mouth in an aroused smile, lip plates parted, optics glowing gold and beautiful.  Drift couldn’t imagine ever tiring of this: seeing Wing before him, beneath him, open and gorgeous and wanting him, taking him, accepting him and all he was.  He couldn’t tear his gaze away. He had no idea what was going on, but he knew he wanted this, and something this beautiful and pure and sacred couldn’t be wrong.

Wing moved, his hand reaching over, almost idly, catching Perceptor’s, and pulling the scientist down into a slow, almost shy kiss. It was less hungry, less familiar than when he kissed Drift. Drift would never have imagined watching other mechs kiss could be so arousing, but he felt as though his entire sensor net had been set on fire, his body juddering to a halt, overwhelmed. 

Wing’s hand slipped off the back of Perceptor’s helm, and Drift could hear some soft, whispered words between them, too low for him to catch, before Perceptor drew back. And any question he might have formulated got squeaked from him as Wing’s attention returned to him, the valve’s calipers rippling down the shaft of his spike, his gold optics glinting with a sort of benign mischief.

Perceptor moved behind him: he could feel the sudden cool tingle of the other’s EM field against his back, and then the smooth slide of two fingers on his exposed equipment, teasing at his valve’s cover. 

Drift found himself panting, the valve yielding with a click and a trickle of heat and liquid against the hand that cupped over it. Beneath him, Wing gave his dreamy smile, the valve squeezing gentle against him. “Perceptor,” he managed, turning his head, only catching a glimpse of the mismatched blue optics, feeling the sudden press of Perceptor’s thighs against his and then the sudden twitch and tremble of his own body as he felt the head of the taller mech’s spike hovering by his valve.

“Things come together,” Perceptor said, echoing Wing, before pressing forward, easing into the valve.

Drift shivered, between them, Wing and Perceptor taking him, their EM fields warm and soft and welcoming, like a cocoon of desire. It was almost too much for him, the spike filling him, the valve squeezing slowly, languorously against him, the glow of golden optics and the hum of a familiar engine. He couldn’t make a word, couldn’t make a thought, only surrender to it, laying between them, folding against Wing’s frame, feeling Perceptor curl against him.

And then the slow roll of Perceptor’s hips, nudging at his valve, pushing him into Wing.  Perceptor took the lead, Drift too overcome to resist, even if he’d wanted. He could only lie, helpless to his own desire as they moved under him, on top of him, filling him with skirling waves of pleasure, rippling and echoing through him, as Perceptor moved more surely, his motion controlling them all, and Drift felt Wing writhe and whimper with lust beneath him, Perceptor giving a low, possessive growl as he took his own time, his own pleasure, taking the others with him by the slow tempo of his spike, until they all three succumbed, spinning in a wash of release and fluids.  Drift’s own spike pumped the silver of his transfluid into Wing, just off tempo with the pulse of Perceptor inside his own valve, tearing a wild keen from his vocalizer, his entire body shuddering between them, hands clutching blindly as though sliding down a cliff with no purchase.

He slumped against Wing, panting, his heaving chassis shifting Perceptor’s weight above him. He felt snug and safe and limp, still trembling from the force of it.  Perceptor leaned closer, glossa licking over his finial with a sated sort of purr. “Together,” Perceptor whispered, and it was the last and only word that mattered as Drift slipped into an overcome recharge.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> schmoop and angst, schmoop and angst. :D

Drift awoke, still nestled between them, but reversed somehow, his face flat against Perceptor’s chassis, his aft pushing into Wing’s belly. He felt…wanted. Drift reached back, slowly, his hand finding Wing’s, drawing it closer around him. Wing shifted, curling closer against him, his nacelles giving a gentle thrum and Drift felt a warm mouth against the back of his neck, moving in an idle kiss.

He lacked words to describe this, the warmth, the comfort, the affection, the sleek contact of the two mechs who meant everything in the world to him. So he stopped looking for them, just wriggling back into Wing’s embrace, his own arm around Perceptor’s neck, like a link of chain holding them all together.

…until his tank gave a soft ping, signaling its emptiness. Frag. In everything, he’d forgotten to fuel yesterday.

He wriggled, trying to hide the small tone as it went off again, only to hear Wing muffle a chuckle against his back.

Drift’s facial plates heated, even as Wing’s arms tightened around him, hugging him close. He felt the jet’s cheekplate against his back, in the channel where the Great Sword normally lay, before Wing moved, pushing up to one elbow, to plant a feathery kiss on Drift’s cheek armor.

“Let me get you something,” Wing whispered. Without waiting for an answer, Wing slid off the berth with that almost eerie elegance, padding toward the small energon dispenser. Drift found himself captivated by the movement, the graceful sway of the skirting panels over the silvery thighs, the smooth, swordsman’s flow. 

Wing looked back over his shoulder at Drift, flattening the pinions out of his way, gold optics coy and glowing, showing only a beautiful crescent of a smile, like a waxing moon, promising more, before he turned, holding a warmed ration of energon out to Drift.  “Shall I get some for Perceptor?” Wing asked. 

Drift considered, looking over at the red mech, who’d flopped onto his back, one hand slack over his chestplate. Perceptor was a hard sleeper, especially after interfacing. “I don’t think we should wake him.”

Wing nodded. “If he wakes, though.”  He settled his hip on the berth, as Drift pushed up, half-sitting. Drift nodded, not bothering to mask the enjoyment and relief as the energon hit his systems.

Wing looked over at the lean frame, stretched along the berth. “I didn’t know,” he said, softly. “About you.”

Drift gave a guilty sort of gulp. “We. When I joined the Autobots.”

A hand covered his, warm and soothing. “Drift, you don’t need to explain. I was,” Wing stumbled over the word, even though the smile never wavered, “dead.  And you have every right to happiness.”  It was just like Wing, Drift thought, generous and understanding to the point of pain.

“I couldn’t tell you,” Drift said. “I mean, I wanted to, but I couldn’t make the words come. I was,” his mouth pulled to a grimace, “I was afraid I’d lose you.”

Wing’s hand squeezed his as he shook his head. “No, Drift. You never could.” 

Drift covered—he hoped—the tremble in another swallow of energon. “I just, I couldn’t hurt you like that. Not when, not when I’d just got you back and there was so much….” He shrugged, helpless before the words.

“There was so much we hadn’t had the courage to say in the past between us,” Wing smiled. Drift could only nod, feeling like a child, one hand clinging to Wing’s, the other clutching his energon. Strange how he could go into battle, devoid of fear, facing countless hating enemies, but he was humbled before this one gentle look, cut to the quick by a smile.

“I want to. To say them now,” Drift said.  He lay the nearly-empty ration aside, drawing Wing against him, feeling the metal struts flex toward him, pliable and eager and full of life. So different from when he’d held the limp, dead form back on Theophany.

Wing met his mouth with a kiss, stretching his frame against Drift’s.  “We will,” he said, voice rich with promise. “And I’m glad that Perceptor spoke with me,” he added.

“I should have,” Drift said, his words stopped by a slim black finger.

“There is no should. Let’s not regret the past, any of it.”

And Drift could see a shimmer of pain in Wing’s optics.  He nodded, falling into silence.

“Everything’s clear now, and open among us,” Wing said, curling against Drift, and Drift felt, almost for the first time, a kind of soft need from Wing, wanting stability, wanting peace. Wanting him. He was so used to thinking of the jet as having all the answers, every wisdom, every surety. This made him all the more precious, then, this glimpse of fragility.

“It is,” Drift agreed, letting his arms wrap around Wing, curling his head against the white shoulder. He felt the body ease against him, softening, almost meltingly, and he felt suddenly sure and strong, a stability for Wing. He felt…needed. And wanted. And as though he was doing something that was spotlessly good. And everything he’d ever longed for, from the gutters onward. “I love you,” he murmured, a small gift of words to the one who gave him, always, everything he wanted.

Wing purred against him, his mouth on Drift’s helm shaping the soft reply.

[***]

Perceptor refused to let himself move, listening to the two talk, the warm spot where Drift had been cooling like a heartache. It felt like some sort of filthy voyeurism, low spying, pretending to be in recharge.  He hadn’t intended to: he’d simply felt the movement beside him, heard the soft murmur of voices, and it had trawled him from sleep, almost without his will. He ached, lying there, at the tenderness of words, the ache of tragic history between them, all the lost promises sprouting tendrils of hope.

He knew—remotely—of their history. But only facts, not this, the emotional web that bound them.  He felt small and petty beside it, beside the dozen little acts of solicitous care he heard between them, saw from under his slitted optic shutter.

And then. Those words. Words said to him that he had rejected, too afraid of the consequence, too daunted by their magnitude.  He felt strangely jealous, hot and ugly, at words he’d been offered first and refused being offered to someone else, someone who accepted with an elegant grace. He wanted to hate Wing for it, for the way he took the offering as almost a matter of course—that of course he would be loved and wanted, of course Drift was his.

And he wanted to hate Drift, for how easily they seemed to forget his presence, how easily he seemed to pale to insignificance beside the blinding white Wing.

But he couldn’t, because they felt…fated somehow. Destined and driven and sacred. Even lying here, he could feel them fitting together, perfectly, a match in height, a match in color, a match in everything, like two pieces designed to fit together.

Who was he to rail against destiny? He should be thankful, he castigated himself, that he’d been allowed to play his part, to sit in the side glow of immanence. He couldn’t hate them for being who they were, what they were. He could only hate himself for his pettiness, his fear, and hope that his presence here, beside them, as their engines purred down into recharge, didn’t defile their brightness.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just bit of a conversation...and planning. :)

Perceptor looked up at the soft chime from the lab’s door. He glanced over to the comm panel he’d installed after a handful of unwanted Brainstorm interruptions. The gloating got to be…excessive, at times.

Wing’s face, head tilted, staring curiously at the little camera light.  He held up a small parcel. “I brought you energon.”

Energon. Perceptor checked the chrono: it was after midshift meal. “How…?”

“Drift told me you often worth through meals.” He hefted the packet again. “May I come in?”

Perceptor clicked the admit function, turning around to face the door as it opened. It was something of a surprise, the way Wing seemed to change the energy of the room, simply by walking in, but the lights suddenly seemed brighter, the air a little less stale.

Wing held the parcel, looking around. “A safe place to put this? I don’t want to interfere with your science.”

Perceptor turned to a side table. “Here.”  He watched Wing cross over to the table, and it was as if he could see through Drift’s optics: Wing seemed almost to glow, and the skirting panels swayed as he walked, light glistening off the glossy white armor. He was beautiful, and Perceptor felt clumsy next to him.  It seemed no surprise Drift—or anyone—would want Wing, or melt under his golden optics. He had a way of making the world just seem to disappear. 

“So,” Wing said, “Can I ask what you’re working on?”

Perceptor shrugged. “I downloaded the files of ongoing projects from Kimia before we left. I’m hoping to find, well, non-military applications for them.”  He opened the energon ration, taking a long moment to drink it.  His systems fizzed and sizzled, and he suddenly realized how hungry he had been.

“Did that bother you?” Wing asked, perching himself carefully on a lab stool, conspicuously out of the way. “Creating weapons?”

“It was not why I pursued science,” Perceptor admitted. “But sometimes ‘I want to create things that help people’ shades into creating things that can be used to hurt others.”

Wing nodded. “Principles often collide with reality.” He stroked his own waist, where, Perceptor knew, he stowed his plasma blades. “I fight to protect. It’s the same paradox.”

It seemed strange, almost impossible, that he could have anything in common with Wing, other than their shared attraction with Drift. And he realized he’d expected Wing to judge him—a pacifist talking to a mech who had killed more than his share, with his rifle and his science combined. It was almost dizzying to have it accepted, just like that.

“So,” Wing said. “May I watch you work?”

“I assure you, it’s rather dull,” Perceptor said, glancing over at the complicated set up of alembics and distillation coils. 

“I imagine you don’t find it dull,” Wing countered. “You looked quite absorbed when I arrived.”

He had been absorbed: science had always been his first and most reliable escape, where emotion was swept aside, as a hindrance, and the world operated by set, stable laws—thermodynamics, conservation of motion, expansion ratios. Science made sense even when you were groping into the unknown. “Drift seems to find it tedious.”

“Drift,” Wing said, his voice rich with a fond kind of laughter, “is not much known for his patience, no.” 

It was the kind of joke that was meant to be shared, that linked the speaker and his audience, and Perceptor felt it warming him, almost more than the energon. “He is not.” A lame reply, but a bid in the share of the joke.

“You know,” Wing said, thoughtfully. “We should do something with that.”

“With what?” Suddenly, Perceptor wasn’t following anymore.

“With Drift. And his endearing lack of patience.” The optics twinkled with mischief.

“Such as?”

“Oh, many options,” Wing said, his voice light. “Starting with tying him down.”

Oh. OH.  “I see.” He could see, very vividly. And it was a lovely image. All the more arousing because Wing was proposing it as a collaboration, a thing they could share.  “When?”

“Tomorrow night, if you’re open then?” A pleased smile.

“I could be.”

“I’d hoped you would.”

“I could be tonight.”  He was already juggling when he could shift the next distillation cycle. 

Wing gave a comely little riffle. “I thought, maybe, perhaps you and Drift could use some time together. I’ve taken up far more than my share of his time. Plus, there is apparently an event at Swerve’s ‘bar’ apparently.”

Ah, a storytelling night, one of those strange, organic rituals that had come into being in the effort to revive Rung.  It seemed natural Wing would be attracted to it. And a night without Wing, just with Drift, did seem appealing.

And thoughtful. That was something he knew he could never manage, that easy thoughtfulness Wing evinced at every turn, always considering others.

Maybe it was the war that did it—maybe the war made you selfish, made you grasp after things for yourself.  Maybe—not maybe—Wing’s way was better, the way of peace, the way they should be. It seemed not so strange to Perceptor that they could have created a perfect society in such an artificial way: how many perfect things had he created in the sterile conditions of the lab. He nodded, finishing the energon with one last swallow. “Thank you, Wing.” And Wing knew, he hoped, that he didn’t mean just for the energon.

“It is nothing,” Wing said, formally, sliding to his feet off the stool. “I only wish I’d known sooner, about you two.”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” Perceptor said. There was no way he would have stood in the way of Drift’s happiness, no matter how his petty envy would have gnawed at him. Last night's doubts seemed so far away, petty and shameful to admit to. That was over, he told himself, releasing what he hoped was the last of his envy. 

“I’d hope not,” Wing said, “in substance, but I would hope I would have been more gracious.”

Perceptor didn’t think it was possible for Wing to be more gracious.  The jet rose up on his toeplates, placing a kiss on his mouth.  “Till tomorrow?”  The words were a liquid promise,  passed between them.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that night unfolds....

Drift grinned up at Perceptor. “So, what’s this all about?”

“Nothing,” Perceptor said. “I just thought we could spend time together. While Wing is busy.”

“Oh, the story thing.” Drift pulled a face. “You want to go?”

No. Not with the lure of having Drift all to himself for the evening.  “It might be enjoyable,” he said, diplomatically, “but,” he added, knowing, at least, that Wing wanted this this way, “perhaps he could socialize better without the two of us shadowing.”

Drift tilted his head, mouth pursed, considering. “He wants to make more friends,” he said, measuringly.  “Not jealous, are you?”

Of Wing? How could he not be?  Wing was beautiful, kind, unmarred by the war. But he knew the right answer. “Of course not.” And there was some small measure of truth in it, because right now, Wing was in the bar, and he was alone with Drift.

Drift grinned before cocking his head in a wink back at Perceptor, one that offered as much as it promised. “Looks like that leaves you and me to our own devices.”

“Looks like it does.”  He couldn’t hide the answering grin.

[***]

It was lonelier than he’d thought, being surrounded by strangers. No, new friends, he corrected himself.  They were merely new friends he had get to build ties with. It would come in time, if only he were patient.

And he could be patient, and he would be. But right now, sitting at one of the café-tables, nursing a glass of fizzing engex, patience felt difficult and slow, like a long, rutted road. 

“Hey!”  The white and blue mech—Tailgate—from the dayroom sidled over. “It’s, uh, it’s good to see you here.”

The smile was one of pure relief—Tailgate had no idea how welcome that message was. “It’s good to be here. I’m looking forward to the stories.” He was: stories were the pavement of the ground he must find a path in, a way to connect these faces and names to actions, a way to give them pasts, and give himself a glimpse of a future. 

“Me too!”  Tailgate hesitated for a klik, then plopped down on a seat next to Wing. “I’ve been taking notes, if you lose track of who’s who.”  He pulled out a datapad. “I’ve been alphabetizing them for quick access.”

“Is it that complicated?”  That sounded daunting.

“It is for me, at least. I, uh, I missed the whole war.  And so they talk about stuff and I never heard of half of it.” He shrugged. “But then a lot of them don’t remember Cybertron before the war.”

“I remember,” Wing said. It felt like a bond between them: they'd both missed the war, in a place where some mechs remembered nothing but. 

“I wanted to ask you! Do you remember Nova Prime?” The blue visor lit with curiosity. 

“Dai Atlas spoke of him often,” Wing began, but trailed off as another mech approached, scowling at Tailgate.  It took him a moment to recall the name. “Cyclonus, yes?”

“What of it.” The purple mech glowered down at him. 

“I owe you thanks.” 

“You owe me nothing.”

“I heard you recited the Primal Sacrament in Crystal City.” A hesitant smile, even as the other seemed to bridle. “It was a kindness  to be commemorated.” The city was empty, but even the death of a city deserved mourning and memory. 

“I’m not known for my kindness,” Cyclonus said stiffly.

“A shame, because it seems to me you’re both kind and wise.” What would the world be, after all, if mechs could stop being what they were 'known' for and could merely be what they were?  

Wing wondered, suddenly, if he was caught in that same net. 

A derisive snort, Cyclonus’s amber optics scouring over Wing’s frame before turning away.

“H-he’s always like that,” Tailgate said, apologetically. “But it was really nice of you to say. I’m sure it means a lot.”

“I hope it does,” Wing said, feeling like he’d flubbed something. It had been haunting him, ever since he arrived, this notion he was unnecessary, superfluous, and now, just somehow always just out of phase with everyone else. He missed Drift, terribly, right now, even though he was only a few decks away. 

Tailgate seemed to sense his discomfort, fumbling with his datapad for a long moment, and then brightening, as he seized an idea. “You said you knew Dai Atlas….”

[***]

This was how it should have been all along, Perceptor thought, burying his face in Drift’s throat, feeling the other buck and twist under him. Just he and Drift, not needing the slippery awful words of emotion, just body against body, touch against touch, EM fields melding together. Wing had broken down that wall between them, at least knocking  a little chink in it, where light could get through. 

That’s what it felt like: bathing in light, as Drift arched up against him, their bodies surging together.  He couldn’t identify precisely what the difference was, why Wing’s absent presence seemed to clarify everything.  Perhaps jealousy had been the goad he’d needed to realize his own emotions.  Perhaps the gift he’d giving Drift in reviving Wing had proven to him, to them both, that he brought something real and valuable to their relationship. He didn’t know and right now it didn’t matter: all that mattered was right here, real and pulsing and alive.

He wondered if that’s how Drift felt the first time he’d been with Wing.  It felt…sacred, to realize you were touching something real, without the veils of self-doubt and deceit you so often threw up in the way. It wasn’t even about the overload that was crashing toward him, like a foaming, frothing wave of data and electrons; it was about that ineffable, luminous newness of them, together, defying time.

How could he ever have been jealous?  His only obstacle had been himself.

[***]

Wing sat for a long time, on the chair in the quarters Drift had given him, knees curled up to his chest. He missed his Great Sword, achingly, now, missed its weight between his shoulders, missed the comfort of all it meant—a burden of the Circle’s legacy, the core that had shaped meaning in his life for millennia.

He stared at the window, to the broad, spangled expanse of stars beyond, glittering points of brightness, overlaid over the gouaches of pastel gas clouds, purples and greens and golds.  It was beautiful, in a fashion, he supposed, but he looked, not for its own beauty but because Drift had thought he would want this view: Drift had thought he’d find pleasure, if not consolation, in the vast expanse surrounding them, like an enormous bowl of gossamer darkness.

It had been so rarely he got to see an open sky, and the last time he’d seen stars without atmosphere had been on their own mad, desperate flight from Cybertron. It was hard to see the naked stars without feeling that tense throb of worry, without scanning, almost frantically, for any sign of pursuit.

He cycled a vent of air, getting up and moving to the berth.  The stars were safe enough now, and they were chasing rather than being chased.  But like before, he felt a hard, ripping pain of being torn away from his past, out of sorts, out of place.  It was only a matter of time, he told himself, before he found his way again. Only a matter of time before his faltering steps strengthened, his purpose revealing itself.

Patience. He simply needed patience.

No, he thought, curling on his side, turning his back on the broad bow of the window, as if rejecting the stars and all the enormity they offered.  One black hand curled over his chassis, pressing against the solid enamel which, just days before by his reckoning, had been splintered and burst from his own death. He lay there, curled around his repaired spark and tried desperately not to think of Drift and Perceptor, entwined together, tried not to think that it was Drift’s future, and that he was merely Drift’s past, a thorn gouging the present. 

No. He needed more than patience. He needed some consolation, however pitiful, however small, that he was wanted.  At one level it was the most basic drive of their kind, he thought: what mech didn't want to feel worthy, remembered, important? But at another it felt, like his chassis under his hand, small and petty and defying its own wholeness with a remembered agony. 


	13. Chapter 13

“And what are you doing here?”  The voice boomed behind him, causing his wingpanels to rustle in alarm. 

He turned, trying not to look as rattled as he felt. “I was merely exploring,” he said.  It was the truth. 

“You have the floorplan,” Ultra Magnus said, severely.  As though that should be enough.

“Yes, but it is better, I think, to experience it life.  Maps may be inaccurate.”  He grimaced as Ultra Magnus seemed to draw himself up, affronted. “ And some of the rooms are unlabeled.” 

“If you’re looking for a specific room, I suggest you ask a member of the command cadre.” 

“All right.” Wing smoothed his flightpanels. “I was looking for a flight deck, honestly.”

“Flight deck.” He shaped the words as though they tasted sour and gritty.

“My kind. We need to fly, occasionally.”  He felt, for the first time in his life, embarrassed by his alt’s requirements, like he had no right to ask anything.

From his massive height, Ultra Magnus frowned down at him for a long, tense moment, and he felt judged and found wanting.  He missed his city, just then, with a depth of pain he’d never felt before.  Argue and yell and fight, they might, the Circle, but they never looked at each other with those hard, excluding optics.

 “I will see what can be arranged,” Ultra Magnus said, finally.

“I’d, uh, I’d appreciate it.” Wing found himself catching at his own hands, wringing them.  He shook his head, puzzled. Since when had he turned into this?  He was a Knight of the Circle of Light. He had helped lead an escape from a ruined planet, under fire.  Yet Ultra Magnus just unnerved him. Maybe near death had changed him. In ways he hadn’t considered.

[***]

It was lazy, probably, but Drift decided that every now and again, he deserved a little laziness. Besides, perhaps it wasn’t so much ‘lazy’ as taking time to appreciate good things—something that in his mind, more people needed to do. It was a habit he’d never had, and one that had eroded to a bare nub during the war.

But this was a good thing, and he desperately wanted to notice. He had such a small storehouse of bright memories and it was greedy to want more, but he couldn’t help himself. He remembered his first conversation with Perceptor, here on the ship. He’d overreached then, grasping for more than was his place, thinking that because he felt, Perceptor had to feel back. He’d been wrong.

Wing, though.

Wing.

He’d thought at first he’d been projecting, casting his dreams over Wing’s shoulders like a fantasy he wasn’t sure he deserved. He sought so many things in Wing’s optics: forgiveness, redemption, worth, and, yes, love.  And he’d seen them all, plus a kind of reverence, a sacred tenderness he would never have dreamed he deserved from anyone. 

He hadn’t been eager to repeat the mistake that had put this brittle distance between he and Perceptor, but the words had pulled themselves from his throat, wild and desperate. And Wing had responded, taking him in, accepting him, loving him back.

There had been a glow around Drift’s spark, ever since, as though Wing had ignited a small flame within him, steady and sure.

And now, he could watch Perceptor, through drowsy optics, and know that though he didn’t—couldn’t—have that with him, it didn’t make what he did have less valuable.  He caught the other’s optics, meeting them with a smile. 

Everything was perfect. And if it wasn’t exactly the way he’d have wanted it, it was because, he thought, the universe surely knew better.

[***]

The refectory.  Another strangeness to Wing, though he was getting used to this one, holding out his wrist so the mech working the line could scan it for his nutritional requirements. He was even accustomed, by this point, to the sudden huff, and the turn to get the rarer airframe grade energon.  And then the packets of additives and nutrients, ranged on the tray as it was handed to him. This, at least, was becoming routine and familiar. He smiled at the mech behind the counter, taking the tray, and the small smile that followed the doubletake did a great deal to mollify the hard tension that had knotted his belly.

Until he stood in the doorway to the refectory proper, seeing table after table of happily chatting mechs.  One day, he thought, he’d fit in among them. Yes. It was better to think like that, to remember how at ease he’d been in Crystal City, than to feel the lonely ache he’d felt last night. He would not fall prey to it, he promised himself.

Still…he wavered on the edge of the room, scanning for a table. 

Until a hand punched the air. “WING! Hey, new jet guy!”  The hand swept back and forth like a semaphore.  “Hey! Wanna sit here?” 

Wing moved over, balancing his tray. “If it’s no trouble.”  New jet guy? Accurate, at least. 

“Wouldn’t invite you over if it was trouble.” Swerve scooted aside, clearing room beside him. “Not, though,” he said, with a broad wink, patting the bench, “that I’m averse to a little trouble or anything.”  He paused, when Wing didn’t move fast enough. “Hey! That was just a joke. You know, joke, like funny? Ha ha? Me,  Swerve. I like the jokes.” 

Wing managed a grin, before moving down beside him. “Thank you.”

“SoooOOOooo,” Swerve tilted toward his tray. “What ya got there? Airframe grade stuff, huh?” He poked a blunt finger at one of the additive packets. “I hear Whirl’s pitching fits about someone else having access to it. Bad enough Cyclonus gets some.”

“Whirl.” Oh. The angry velicopter. “I, uh, I don’t think he likes me.”

Swerve snorted. “Whirl hates everyone. Including himself. Not really an exclusive club, there.” 

“Still, if he’s upset….” Wing looked at his energon ration, dubiously.

“Eh, upset’s like his default setting or something.  Peacetime hobby. He throws fits like he used to throw grenades.”

“Oh.”

“No ‘oh’ about it!” Swerve clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s Whirl. He’s like a universal constant. It’s nothing special. Though, if you really want to get under his plating,” Swerve leaned forward, with a  mischievous grin, “tell him you think Cyclonus is the biggest badaft here.”

That sounded, even to Wing’s audials, like a distinctly bad idea.  “I think I’m rather under his plating enough as it is,” he said, tipping another of the nutrient packs into his ration, stirring it with great concentration with the glass implement.

“Yeah, and ewwwww what a mental image,” Swerve said. “Speaking of Cyclonus, though, heard you met His Ancient Dourness last night.”

“I did.” Another grimace. It was like Swerve was trying to parade his failures in front of him.

“Hey!” Swerve jostled him. “Cyclonus will warm up to you. Just like, you know, sing to him in Old Cybertronian.”

“I think he might get the, uh, the wrong impression if I did that.” Serenading Cyclonus didn’t sound like a good idea.  Wing was beginning to doubt if Swerve even had any good ideas.

“What? That’s how mechs used to court each other in the olden days?”

The wingpanels rustled behind him, almost involuntarily, but it didn’t seem anything could stifle Swerve.

“Because, you know, that’d be kind of cute. You and Drift, I mean.”  Swerve wriggled in his seat. “Kinda got some epic or romantic or whatever-ic overtones to it, don’t you think?  Drift, the run down guttermech, and you, you know, all white and shiny and aristocratic and—“

“I-I’m not aristocratic,” Wing said.  “I was training to be—“

“Hey, now.  Don’t ruin the fantasy with any of that truth stuff.” Swerve took the last swallow of his energon, waving a hand as if shooing Wing’s words away. “That’s not now love works.”

“It’s not?”

“Oh sure. They’ll all say it’s about honesty and self-sacrifice and slag like that. But you know when you look at it, how’s that make any sense, huh? I mean, sacrifice, right?” Swerve gave a nod. “How can you give something up for someone and not, eventually, ya know, resent that?”  The smile seemed to flicker, uneasy, or more like it was a projection on a scrim. 

And Wing tried to come up with an answer, but the thought was new and dark to him, like iron filings clouding his fuel, thinking of Drift.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hey finally more porn. threesomes are hard, yo. x_x

They’d chosen Perceptor’s quarters, as the easiest to convince Drift to come to, and Wing had paced, nervously, until the door opened. And then everything had fallen away, all the niggling doubts and worries that had gnawed at Wing’s mind just disappeared.  He could feel the weight of the rope, coiled against his backstruts, pressed between his flightpanels and back.  The smile blossomed on his face, as though called forth by Drift’s presence, bright and genuine.

Drift endured a microklik of surprised confusion, taking them both in. “I. Uh. Hi?”  He looked so lost, so puzzled, so aware that something was up, that Wing couldn’t defeat the laugh that burbled through his vocalizer, stepping forward to plant a kiss on that confused mouth.

It felt natural, it felt pure, it felt right. And Drift reacted with him, hands coming up to Wing’s shoulders, stroking along the errant pinions, making a soft sound somewhere in his throat that sent a thrill through Wing’s body. He forgot Perceptor’s presence for a moment, just enveloping himself in Drift, strong and yet trembling, fierce and gentle. 

Perceptor slid around to Drift’s back. Wing could feel the scientist’s hands snake around Drift’s narrow waist, brushing against Wing’s belly. Wing pulled his hands away, slipping behind his back, to slide one end of the rope to Perceptor, reaching with another to circle Drift’s wrist.

The blue optics flared against Wing’s cheek, surprised. “What?” Drift said, into the kiss.

Wing surged forward, to suck on the lower lipplate for a klik before answering. “We just don’t want you to go anywhere.”

“Trust me,” Drift said, leaning back into Perceptor’s embrace. “Last thing on my mind.”

[***]

Drift moaned, tossing his head back, his weight falling into his arms, bound over his head by that length of cord.  He couldn’t even trust himself to words, his body arching into Perceptor’s touch sliding up his abdominal armor. “Please,” he breathed, tilting his head to one side, desire shivering the word into a handful of syllables.

Perceptor gave a quiet sound, almost a laugh, ghosting his hands back down Drift’s body, skimming around the hips.

“Please what?” Perceptor’s voice was husky, palms sliding flat along the front of Drift’s thighs, down, then up, tracing his thumbs along the interface hatch.  Deliberately goading, heady himself with power.

A garbled sound, the body under his hands, against his chestplate quivering with uncertainty. “I…please. Just…whatever you want.” 

Surrender, complete and total, into Perceptor’s hands, into his will.  Wing had been right: there was something about Drift and being pushed close to the edge of helplessness.  And it was a beautiful and sacred trust. “Maybe what I want,” Perceptor breathed, leaning over, to press the words into a biting kiss along Drift’s throat, “is you.” The words were only half in play: he remembered Drift’s earnest protestation of love, the light of hope in his optics, and how Perceptor had ached, but the words hadn’t come.  He remembered how that blue glow, lambent and hopeful, had dimmed and turned away.  And he felt, even now, that wanting wasn’t the same as loving, but they were running together, asymptotal.

Drift shuddered again, bumping his hips back against Perceptor in open invitation, optics lidding, mouth shaping a sound of want.  Perceptor slid his hands to the interface hatch, clicking it open, fingertips moving to explore the bare, unenameled metal, feeling the rounded rises of the equipment covers. 

Another push back, wanton, and Perceptor could feel the heat from the valve against his hand.  His own spike nearly burned in response, desire a fierce flame running through him.  It took restraint—as much as he was known for—to force himself to slow, to tease the valve with his sensitive fingertips, until it clicked aside, and then circling it more, trailing through the leaking lubricant, feeling Drift twitch and push into his touch. 

He autoreleased his own equipment—straightforward and without flourish. Perceptor took a moment, pressing Drift back against him, compressing the spike between Drift’s aft and his belly, teasing them both with distance.  Drift squirmed, sliding his pelvic armor against the spike’s slick underside, arching and curving, frustrated, his hands above them twisting in their bonds.

It was enough: if he needed a sign he was wanted, he had plenty.  Perceptor shifted his weight down, sliding the spike off Drift’s aft, tucking under to nose the member into the waiting valve. 

Drift gave a groaning sigh, calipers clutching at the spike, insistent and firm, coaxing Perceptor to push further in, slowly, feeling the valve spread before him, a sinuous wave of release and pressure, until he was sheathed entirely in Drift’s body, taking most of the smaller mech’s weight across his hips. The valve rippled against him, Drift venting hot air from his vents that stirred and teased the space between them. 

Perceptor looked over to where Wing was sitting on the berth, gold optics avid, dancing over them both. The jet had peeled off, after binding the wrists, in his quiet, courteous way, giving Perceptor time. And this was an invitation: Wing stood, smoothly, stepping into Drift’s line of sight, aware that he was on display and adding a little switch to his step that set his skirting panels dancing.  Drift gathered focus, head lolling forward, lidded optics dreamily finding Wing who moved into a kiss as though drawn by magnets, their mouths meeting. Perceptor could feel the clench of the valve against him as they kissed, before Wing broke away to draw a sultry circle with his glossa around the lens of Perceptor’s scope, his optics never leaving Drift’s.  Perceptor’s hands clutched on the white and red armor, rocking his hips forward and back, gently into the valve.

Wing slid downward, planting a flare trail of kisses down Drift’s chassis, fingers lingering in the underseams of Drift’s chest plating, until he was on his knees, mouth kissing, importunately, at Drift’s spike cover.

The cover gave, with an audible click, irising open to the spike that demanded release.  Wing gave a joyful little exhalation, pausing as if to admire the white and red and black enamelwork, before running his glossa in a precise, thrilling line, up Drift’s spike.  He circled the head’s rim, optics tilted upward, seeking Drift’s face, before taking it into his mouth.  Drift gasped, twitching, caught between two pleasures: Perceptor behind him, Wing before him, every motion, no matter how small, lighting tracks of lust and arousal through him. 

Drift tried to make a word, an inchoate sound of having everything he could possibly want, pure joy, pure fulfillment as Perceptor’s hands closed around his hips, bracing him as he began a long, slow mounting thrust. Perceptor’s motions rocked him into Wing’s mouth—the jet’s hands covered Perceptor’s, joining him in pleasuring Drift, his optics finding Perceptor’s, over Drift’s shoulder, as they brought their love to a trembling, lost ecstasy.


	15. Chapter 15

Perceptor hated leaving, in the morning, hated that he'd signed onto an early shift in the lab, which forced him to pull himself awake, away, while Drift and Wing still drooped in a languorous recharge together.  Drift gave a soft sound, hands drowsily clinging to his shoulders as Perceptor pushed himself up from the berth, but didn't wake, merely stirring, and when Perceptor pulled away, turned to burrow against Wing, as though covering the sudden absence, the sudden cool air left by Perceptor's body.

But the lab beckoned, its own allure, like a silent, ever-patient lover itself, just as demanding in its own way. And science gave him solace, and more than that, confidence, as he navigated the rules, the data, control and variables.  It was a world he understood, a world he could belong in, even when he felt adrift every place else.

He felt adrift here, even after waking from a threesome with Drift and Wing. He felt…superfluous, that was it. Superfluous, and worse, that he’d lost his chance. That night, decacycles ago, still haunted him: he’d closed a gate, dammed up some emotion and it felt that Drift had let it flow toward Wing, all of it.

They’d curled together, around his absence, and the last sight Perceptor had, as the door closed, was that of a drowsy Drift, his black hands reaching between Wing’s thighs, the jet tilting his head over his shoulder, seeking a kiss. Perfect, synchronized, matched.

The autoclave bleeped, almost impatient, a reminder that he needed to set it, get the alembics ready for the next batch. He murmured an apology—to the air, to science—closing the autoclave’s door, and setting it with careful, skilled hands. He could do this. He could do science. It was just relationships he was no good at.

Even before Turmoil’s ship, he’d never been good at relationships—his fumbling with Kup, a few awkward attempts at a tryst with Ironfist. Nothing significant. Nothing that did what the romantic holovids promised—making him feel whole, complete, filling that emptiness that had seemed to yawn in his chassis long before Turmoil’s cannon blasted a hole through.

And he’d told himself for years that it was just that—a fantasy, a fable, a myth, something that people chased after, because Cybertronians, after all, needed some purpose, something that eluded them, just out of reach. 

Until he’d seen Drift with Wing. 

That was the core of it, really. That was what had stirred up these emotions he’d thought had settled, silted down: the almost numinous light between the two, the way they seemed to resonate together, even unconsciously, even in recharge.

Maybe it was the sword, the blade that had been Wing’s. Maybe it was that artifact, carried so close to Drift’s body for so long, slowly bringing him into some resonance with the jet.   Maybe that’s why they seemed so accepting of each other—one body fitting against the other, the way Wing’s body so openly responded to Drift’s touch, how quietly thrilled Drift seemed by it.

And he was aware, too aware, how his own body was slow to respond, how Drift had to work for any glimmer of pleasure, how his limbs seemed just a little too long, too ungainly.

Or maybe the mechanism didn’t matter. Maybe what mattered was the end result, the compound, not the catalyst.  Maybe it was all in Perceptor’s head, jealous projections of someone not even decently scorned.

It felt worse to think he was tolerated, nothing more, sitting on the hem of their happiness.

He shook it off, or tried to, spinning the taskpad toward him.  He had plenty here to keep his mind occupied. And if not, he could find something. He had all of Kimia’s notes, after all.

And on the top of the inventory were…pico surveillance pods, little cameras barely the size of a fingertip.  And they did need to be field tested.

A thought came to him, sharp and clear as a dataslide, dancing in front of his vision, as though projected from his reticle, refusing to leave his sight, his mind.

He could…he could verify. He could study them, an observation, neutral, uncontaminated data. He could watch them without him and he could see, he could study what it was, what made it work.  Made them work.  

Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was all in his head. In which case, seeing it on screen, unadulterated, would clear his gaze. Science was all about objectivity, after all.

He didn’t feel objective—at all—though, as he palmed a half-handful of the transmitter pods, slipping them into his storage as he checked the autoclave’s chronometer.

He had just enough time….

[***]

Wing gave a soft purr, wriggling back against Drift’s frame. It felt so good to feel Drift behind him—to feel anyone or anything behind him, really.  He didn’t remember being dead, precisely, but he woke up, sometimes, from the cold fear of loneliness, like an echo of a dead mech’s crypt in a dead city. It was just a comfort to be able to lean back, or forward, and feel the tingling fuzz of Drift’s EM field, or hear his ventilations, or just…know he was there, if Wing needed, at the end of a comm line.

Just knowing that helped, just knowing that Drift would come if he needed him to, made all the difference when he woke in his quarters, alone, feeling the vastness of the ship rumbling around him.

But it was also nice to have times like this, where he could lean back, and feel the sleek metal, and the way that Drift’s arms wrapped around his ribstruts, the face fitting itself between his nacelle and throat, exactly as if they were made for each other. He could feel their helm finials slide together, satiny and perfect.  It was a reminder, if he ever needed one, of the sheer fierce joy of being alive.

He tried to think of words to say, but none came—there was no need for them. It struck Wing that words were things you needed when you needed—words expressed loss, lack, what you didn’t have. He had, right here, everything he could ever want. Even just saying ‘I love you’ would have been a need, expecting some response, wanting, needing acceptance.

He didn’t need to say it and that made it all the more perfect. 

So instead of words, he twisted at his waist, onto his back, sliding one thumb along Drift’s cheek, just…looking at the drowsy blue optics, the still-too-serious face.  He placed a kiss on that earnest mouth, before Drift could try to say something. There was no need for that, either, just this kiss between them, potent and sweet, tingling and richer than any energon between them. 

They'd have to leave Perceptor's quarters at some point, this warm nest redolent with memories of last night, the smell of interfacing thick in the air.  But not quite yet. 

They didn’t even need to escalate it, to push it to interfacing. It was enough, right now, like this, their optics saying anything their bodies could want to, the plushness of their inter-locking EM fields a richer pleasure than any ephemeral release.

All that mattered was now, reflected in the blue of Drift’s optics, bluer than the lost skies of Theophany.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things happen! Plot ensues! Whirl!

“Make yourself comfortable,” Rung said, gesturing toward the long berth in his office. Wing had perched on the edge of it, fingers curling over the rounded lip, looking for all the world like he was ready to take flight.

“I’m fine,” Wing said.

“You can lie back, if you want.”

A shake of the head, a little too quick. “I’d rather not.” He managed a smile.

Rung waited, tilting his own head. He knew enough to use silence in place of questions.

“It’s just that,” Wing said, finally, “on my back, like that, I feel…it feels dead. Like I’m dead.”

“I see.”  Rung settled down himself in his chair.  “Does that bother you often? That thought?”

Wing hesitated again. “It will pass, I’m sure. I just…I was dead for a while.” 

“I understand.” A wry smile ghosted around the corners of Rung’s mouth. “Possibly more than you might think.”

“Oh?”  A flare of curiosity in the gold optics.

“I was offline for a while, myself.” He tapped his helm. “Shot, here.” 

“And do you…feel differently? Sometimes?”

Rung gave a gentle smile. “Of course I do. I’d be worried if I didn’t, honestly.” He could feel himself climbing on to a soapbox, but he didn’t care. Maybe Wing would actually listen.  No, Rung, that was an unfair thought: the others were doing the best they could. “We don’t need to handle things alone, Wing. If the war—if this journey, even—has taught us anything it’s that we are strongest when we can rely on each other, get help from each other.” He remembered trying to get the same message through to Ultra Magnus, only to be stonewalled by a frown that would likely register on a Richter scale.

But Wing nodded, instead, some of the tension leaving his shoulders, the pinions on the nacelles releasing from their tight tuck. “I just…I know I can’t be remembering it, but it feels like I am. Being dead, that is. Lying alone. Abandoned.” 

“Maybe you are remembering something, Wing.”  Rung tapped his helm. “We were revived. Which meant we hadn’t entirely gone.”

Wing studied his hands for a long moment. “What do you remember?”

He shouldn’t answer, probably. It was probably not good medicine to cross that line between healer and patient. But then again, lines had never done anything but hold things back. “I remember light, and noise, and this terrible regret that I wasn’t able to save,” he hesitated, and then finished, “save a life.”  It wasn’t entirely accurate, but close enough. Fort Max had lost…enough. He didn’t need the guilt, the added toll of pain. 

Wing nodded. “Yes.  And it seemed like that was…everything. I’d thought—we all did—that when you died, you know, your spark ascended, raised up in a mystical union with the Being that is all of us.”  His optics glowed with that ardent light of a believer.  Rung hadn’t seen that in ages. 

No, wait. He had.  Once, when he’d seen Cyclonus talking to Tailgate outside the ship’s chapel.

A shrug from the jet, one foot kicking over the floor, as though to scuff away embarrassment. “I thought I’d failed, somehow, that I didn’t get that.” Wing gave a smile at the floor, optics flicking up only briefly.

“And now?” Because it was the next logical question. 

But before the jet could answer, the ship seemed to shudder, floor bucking beneath them, the walls groaning against the bolts holding the plates together.  Wing’s hands clutched at the edge of the slab, and Rung found himself almost lifted from his seat, landing hard on the outer edge of the chair, barely catching himself from the floor.

Wing recovered sooner, bouncing to his feet, to the window behind him. “Quantum jump error,” he said, his voice thick with an old fear.  Of course, Rung thought: Wing had traveled the stars before. 

Wing vented air. “We’re stable, at least.” 

“Could it have been the metrotitan?” 

Wing shook his head. “That feels different, like gliding through glass. Not like this.”  He lingered by the window, staring out, as though trying to read the stars.  “Were we supposed to jump?”

Rung shook his head. “Rodimus always announces jumps.” He always made a big announcement of them, in fact, starting with the ‘next step on our quest to save Cybertron’ and ending with ‘till all are one.’  And Rung muted his comm when he was working, but not to command channel.

The wings flicked. “I need—I want to go check on Drift.”  The optics flicked over his shoulder at Rung, as though asking permission.

Rung nodded, just as there was a ping on his command channel—Rodimus demanding a group conference. “Yes, of course.  We can finish this, well, any time.”

A soft-edged smile. “It’s nice to feel that we have that. Time, I mean.”

[***]

The alert came hard on the heels of the quantum leap: bright bolts of light zinging from the surface of a nearby planetoid. They creased the ship’s hull, not enough to do any serious damage, but enough to threaten the possibility. Whoever was down there was in a ‘shoot first ask questions maybe never’ kind of mood.

How do we build peace, he thought, if we can’t even stop shooting each other long enough to speak? 

“Pacification, only,” Rodimus was saying. “We don’t know who or what we’re up against down there, but we damn sure don’t want them thinking they can get away with this.”

“We could just move out of orbital range,” Cyclonus muttered. “Probably too simple and not exciting enough, though.” His yellow optics glared balefully at Whirl, who was already publicly loading his chest guns.

It was a bit vulgar, Drift admitted, but, well, it was Whirl. 

“They shot first.”

“We did just suddenly appear out of foldspace,” Skids mused. “I mean, that does sort of look like an act of war.”

“Except for the fact we didn’t shoot back,” Rodimus said, tartly.  Beside him, Ultra Magnus gave a minute nod.

“But we’re planning a full-on assault,” Cyclonus retorted.

“Well, yeah,” Rodimus said, almost surprised that there could be anything else. “Of course. Because they shot at us.”

Cyclonus threw up his hands, looking pained. “I will not do this. I will not be part of this madness. If you want peace, you must treat others with peace.”

“Someone needs to tell it to those guys down there,” Whirl said. “Shoot me, I shoot you back twice. Fraggin’ law of nature.” 

“Your very existence is an affront to nature,” Cyclonus snarled.

 “So’s your face.” Whirl bristled, the chambers of his chest guns whirring ominously. “Sounds like you’re trying to protect whoever’s down there. Either that, or you’re a yellow-greased coward.”

Cyclonus straightened, as though his spinal struts had been rodded. “I need prove nothing to you.”

“Says you,” Whirl said. He hunched closer, his yellow optic taking on a murderous gleam.

Ultra Magnus cleared his vocalizer, pointedly.

Whirl subsided, tossing his optic bell back toward Rodimus. “Look, we going down to ‘pacify’ or we going to stay up here and babysit Mr Conscientious Objector?”

“Going. Definitely,” Rodimus said.

Drift spoke up. “Thing is, Cyclonus, they shoot at us, and we’re in a neutral-registered ship, well, it’s not about Autobot or Decepticon. Those people down there just don’t like strangers. And that means they’re a danger to anyone in this sector of space.” He gave a satisfied nod. That sounded right and good.  They were protecting others.

“And,” Rodimus said, “That means there’s something they don’t want us to get close enough to see.”

“With our track record around artifacts,” Skids said, “can we really blame them?”

Rodimus shot Skids a hurt look. “Hey, for all we know this was, you know, destiny. And the next great step on our quest could be right down there on that planet, waiting for us.”

“And hoping we don’t blow it up,” Sunstreaker muttered, from the corner. 

Rodimus gave an exasperated huff. “Look, if you don’t want to go, don’t fraggin’ go.  This isn’t the war anymore. Volunteers only. Just, if you don’t go, at least shut up.”

Drift stepped up, with a nod. “I’m going.” Maybe he was setting an example, maybe not. But he owed it to Rodimus to back him up.

“Frag yeah,” Whirl said, flicking the safeties on and off. “Better than rivet-patrol.” 

“I will go,” Ultra Magnus rumbled. He sounded monumentally unhappy. Then again, he always did.

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Sunstreaker said. “Be good to hear something other than Swerve.”

“I’ll go.” A quiet voice, in the doorway, almost afraid to speak up, his optics seeking Drift's. 

Wing. Drift felt his spark surge toward the other, wanting to tell him to stay behind, where it was safe.  But Ultra Magnus gave that glower, that signaled he was about to veto Wing’s offer, and that rankled something deep in Drift. Ultra Magnus didn’t like him, and Primus knew he had good reasons not to, but Wing was...Wing.  Innocent. Perfect. Good.

And a damn good fighter.

“Wing comes,” he said, nodding, overriding any objection. He shot a look at Rodimus, who seemed oblivious to the currents in the room. But all that mattered was Rodimus looked over at Wing, at his weapons, and nodded. 


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle is won, and Perceptor loses ground

Perceptor had stayed behind. He wasn’t this kind of warrior, wasn’t eager for combat like Whirl or Drift.  Because he saw it in Drift, how the optics lit up at the idea, and he understood, more than a little, how eager one could be to do what one felt one did best. It was the same feeling Perceptor had sitting in his lab, rapt with science. It was something he could understand, but a place he couldn’t really go. He could fight, from a distance, but never close in, and never with the fierce enjoyment Drift had. 

Besides, Wing was going with him, Perceptor had thought, glumly, making Perceptor’s presence more and more unnecessary. 

It had been a taut few cycles, as he tried to busy himself in his lab, but things were in slow cycles—the fabricator still working on his newest order, the autoclave sterilizing the equipment he’d need. Even his notes were up to date, tabbed and cross-referenced.  And the journal article he’d found had failed to capture his attention, his mind drifting planetside wrapped in a dozen things that could go wrong.

The worry had all been for naught, of course. The away-party had come back, boisterous and jubilant: Whirl gleefully showing off how he’d had a thumb claw ripped off, Rodimus basking in success. Even Sunstreaker’s perennial scowl was lifted a bit.

And Wing. Wing had practically glowed, incandescent through the greenish splatter of what Perceptor assumed to be alien blood, looking tired but happy, giddy from the praise of all of the others.

All of them, even Whirl. 

But Wing only had optics for Drift, also green-streaked, also tired, also glowing with contentment. And they’d greeted Perceptor, who’d stepped up with the medics, to check them over, but he’d been called away by Rodimus, to the drop shuttle.

“Booty,” Rodimus said, with a wink, as he showed the strapped, mound of…something. “You know, spoils of war and all that.”

“What is it?”

“Hey,” Rodimus said, “I just capture it. It’s your job to figure that out. You know, plumbing the mysteries of science and all that.”  He rubbed his palms together. “I hope it’s something good.” 

Perceptor was tempted to ask how, exactly, they picked this thing to grab, but he figured the answer would be more of the same, so he’d merely sighed, crossing the hangar bay to get a grav sled to move the thing into his lab.  At least, he consoled himself, it was he Rodimus had picked for this, not Brainstorm. That was some consolation, some vote of confidence and faith.

He was pushing it down the corridor when he passed the combat party again, a tight knot, surrounded by others—Atomizer, Tailgate, Rewind—making their slow way to Swerve’s bar. Drift dropped out of the crowd, still grinning and happy from the celebration.

“You coming?” Drift said, breathless. 

Perceptor’s optics flicked to the crowd, before he shook his head. He gestured to the lump on the grav sled. “Rodimus gave me this to look over.”

The smile dimmed, but didn’t disappear. “Later, maybe? In your quarters?” 

Perceptor could almost hear the pleading, wanting to share, wanting to spill the happiness, all the details of the battle with him, delight him with tales of danger defeated, a story safe to hear because it was in the past, and Drift was fine.

And part of him wanted that, like a sort of wooing or courtship, to share the experience. But he knew, just looking at Drift, that the story would include Wing, and right now…right now, and he damned himself for his own insecurity…he couldn’t bear to hear the way he knew Drift’s voice would soften saying the jet’s name, the way he’d be sure to give Wing all the credit he doubtless deserved.

He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. Not right now, his jealousy making him brittle and petty.

And he knew this would only make it worse, but there seemed to be a streak of masochism, fueled by self-hate, in him, as he shook his head again. “I will probably be late in the lab and you are probably tired.” 

Drift’s face fell, but he recomposed it into a smile. “You’re probably right. I’d probably just fall asleep on you anyway.” Meekly granting that Perceptor was probably right, the way he always did, submitting to the scientist as smarter, wiser.

Perceptor felt neither smart nor wise, only small and pitiful, wanting to hide himself in his lab and hope against hope things would smooth out, his jealousy would evaporate in the heat of science and time.

“T-tomorrow, then? Or whenever you have time?”

He couldn’t push Drift that far away, and he pushed his mouthplates into a smile. “Of course. Then we’ll both have something to share.”

The blue optics lit up under the white helm, accepting that as the reason for Perceptor’s brush off. And it made sense, in a way, even to Perceptor, that seductive sense he half-believed himself.  “Yes,” Drift said, just as someone from the crowd called his name. He stepped toward the crowd, ducking his head. “I just…we’re just going to get a drink.”  He spread his palms, almost asking permission.

“Go,” Perceptor said, and the kindness here, at least, wasn’t feigned, the way Drift wanted his approval to go do something as simple as having a drink with friends.  “You’ve earned it.”

[***]

And Perceptor had earned this: a night with the strange object of green-burnished metal, ovoid, like an egg, almost.  It had sat in the lab, blandly, nestled in enigma, not defiant, just mysterious.  And that had excited something he’d thought dormant, and for half the night he’d flung himself headlong into the mystery, running every basic non-intrusive scan and probe he could think of.

And for half the night, it worked, keeping his mind engaged, fascinated, chewing upon the mystery: what kind of metal, what was its purpose, what was that series of divots at the top? 

But his scientific mind exhausted itself, in the shipcycle’s darkest hour, and his thoughts wandered to Drift. And the surveillance pods he’d stowed in each of their rooms. And he knew he shouldn’t…but he did.

He clicked through their channels, each revealing darkness, emptiness, motion detectors reading nothing, and he was about to decide th pods were malfunctioning when one of them lit up, the feed going white, at first, from wash from the corridor as the door opened.

Wing’s quarters. And Wing. And Wing was not alone: Drift slid in after him, arms wrapping around the jet’s waist from behind as the door closed. There was a moment of blur, as the pod adjusted for the lowlight, a moment of agony that Perceptor filled in all too well, the way Wing’s face would soften, and he’d turn, and press a warm kiss against Drift’s mouth, his own hands sliding up Drift’s shoulders….

When the picture resolved, Wing was drawing Drift to the berth, mouth still parted as though fresh from just such a kiss, his optics locked on Drift’s face. 

“…glad to get you alone,” Drift whispered, leaning over Wing as the jet melted to the berth, tantalizingly close. 

“You should have asked earlier,” Wing said, tartly, tipping his mouth up to close the distance between them, palms ghosting down Drift’s ribstruts. 

“You were having fun,” Drift said, his voice growing husky, hips pressing against Wing’s. 

“I’m having more fun, now,” Wing teased. 

Perceptor envied the easy teasing between the two, the way Drift’s nose wrinkled in a laugh, free and uninhibited.

“I’ve barely gotten started,” Drift teased back, one palm spreading on the jet’s cockpit, pinning him down.  Perceptor could see the gold optics brighten, surprised and aroused, as Drift lowered himself, kissing his way down the jet’s body, sliding back between the silver thighs, until his glossa flicked on the jet’s interface hatch.

“….Drift?”

“Open,” Drift said, his voice gentle and rough simultaneously, his mouth moving over as his fingers lifted one of the hipskirting panels, giving an exploring kiss to the bared joint beneath. Wing shivered, his hands reaching out, one finding the red of a spaulder, as the interface hatch clicked aside, obedient. 

Drift gave a gratified growl, turning his mouth’s attention to the equipment covers, while his fingers continued their blind exploration. 

“Drift…!” Wing gasped, the hand on the spaulder clutching, as his hips tipped up into the gentle kiss on his valve cover.

“Shhhhh,” Drift murmured, pressing the sound into the thin metal. “Just enjoy.” 

Wing cycled a long, shaking vent of air, letting his head loll back against the berth, as the valve cover spiraled open.  He gave a soft mewl of pleasure as Drift licked along the polished rim, optics lidding as he tasted the jet’s lubricant.   Wing’s legs shifted on the berth, twitching and jumping as Drift continued, mouth pressed against the valve, glossa probing inside the mesh lining, flicking itself against the rim.

It didn’t take long, and Perceptor could feel his own valve cycle on, just watching. But he was always slow to arouse, that way, slow to climax. He always felt self-conscious, when Drift did it to him, too much pressure to perform, to show he was enjoying it. He didn’t like being the center of attention, his overload the single goal.

Wing…didn’t have his inhibition, writhing wantonly on the berth, whimpering and moaning, his voice escalating in pitch and volume in tempo with some movement of Drift’s that Perceptor couldn’t see. Until the cries spilled into a high keen, his body bucking against Drift, optics squeezed shut, overcome as the charge burst through his sensornet, cascading through the capacitors.

Drift lifted his head away, the gloss of Wing’s lubricant shiny on his mouth, as he watched the jet thrash in ecstasy, his own mouth echoing the round shape of Wing’s, his optics feasting on the jet’s response. 

It was beautiful and erotic and sacred and Perceptor, watching, felt worse than a thief, like a profaner of mysteries, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away.


	18. Chapter 18

Wing’s hands hooked hard on Drift’s shoulders, hauling him up his body, mouth meeting mouth in a hungry kiss, tasting his lubricant on Drift’s eager mouth.  He murmured something, not even words, into the kiss, pulling Drift against him, feeling the solidity of Drift’s body, the realness of the frame’s angles and planes. His body still throbbed with pleasure, like a warm pulsar in his belly.  He’d been nervous for the fight—his first fight since returning, and his second fight in, oh, such a long time.  But he and Drift had fallen into a rhythm and it had been less like a fight and more like a dance, even a courting dance, swinging and lunging in a perfect synchrony. 

He’d felt the pride radiate from Drift, fighting beside him, as though fighting alongside Wing again was an honor, was some loose thread woven back into a tapestry.  To Wing, it just felt…right, the way things were meant to be, and this moment, alone, had been building all day.

But he wouldn’t—couldn’t—let Drift have all the fun. He let his head fall back, from the kiss, running his hands down the Great Sword’s channel in Drift’s back, feeling the other arch up into the touch, optics dimming, and missing the mischievous smile that bloomed on Wing’s face, an instant before the jet’s hands tightened on Drift’s waist, and he found himself flung to one side, a sleek silver thigh hooking over his so that the two landed, positions reversed, with Drift on his back, and Wing, triumphant, straddling his hips.

Drift’s face caught the grin from Wing’s, and he raised his hands along the berth in a gesture of surrender. “You win,” he said.

Wing gave a wriggle, leaning over to pin the wrists to the berth. “And what is it I win, Drift?”

“What do you want?” Drift bucked his hips up, playfully, lifting Wing off the berth. 

“I’d think that would be obvious,” Wing rejoined, bending over, their mouths meeting in a kiss that was half a tease.  “Maybe I should invite Perceptor to explain it to you.”

A little of the glow faded from Drift’s optics. “He says he’s busy tonight. The thing we found planetside.”

. “Science is a demanding lover.” Wing’s own smile dimmed, briefly, before brightening again. “But then again, so am I.”  He flicked his glossa at Drift’s mouth, leaning his chassis down, so they were connected, wrist to hip, sliding his thighs between Drift’s. 

Drift’s voice was earnest, optics lambent and glittering blue. “Anything you want. Just ask.” Surrender more serious than his mock one, earlier, and a yielding that opened his interface hatch, opened himself, as Wing, fluidly, beautifully, arched and surged, sinking his bared spike into Drift’s valve, leaving them both gasping, shivering with pleasure.

[***]

“Must be some interesting holovid,” Brainstorm’s voice, crackling and crass, behind Perceptor.  Perceptor started upright, hand cutting the surveillance pod’s feed. He’d seen enough—too much—anyway.

They didn’t need him. They didn’t want him, more than willing to leave him to his lonely laboratory, a brief afterthought, a toy at best.  Not part of them, not one of them. 

“It was…informative,” Perceptor said, blandly, hoping the tremor didn’t show in his voice, or that it would be—reasonably, he figured—written off as being startled by the sudden intrusion. “You’re here early.” And unwelcomely, he added, silently.

“I heard there was some work to be done.” Brainstorm’s optics slid over to the greenish metal orb, his tone implying that Perceptor wasn’t doing it.

He had been. He’d needed a break.  That was all. “Rodimus gave it to me,” he said, a bit more forcefully than he’d intended.  He was feeling possessive, clinging to the one thing he still had. What had Wing said?  Science was a demanding lover?  He was a fierce and jealous one, then. 

“Yeah, well…Rodimus isn’t always known for brilliant decisions.”  Perceptor wished he could disagree more ardently.  “Besides, two brain modules are always better than one.  Except, ya know, in a sparkeater’s stomach.” He laughed at his own joke, the thick bellowing laugh of someone who knew the joke wasn’t all that funny, but that the laughter would offend someone he wanted to offend.

Brainstorm: Only he could weaponize humor.

“Possibly,” Perceptor said, “But this is highly classified, and until you get express approval from Rodimus, I’ll have to decline the offer.” He felt dirty and low, hiding behind protocols.  But it was worth it for the flicker of irritation on Brainstorm’s face. 

“You’ve always been such a plodding, by-the-book type,” Brainstorm said. “It’s why you lack, you know, the real spirit of innovation.” Unlike him, obviously.

“Perhaps.” It stung. How could it not?  But there was some vent to his irritation at himself in goading Brainstorm right back, fighting him with blandness. “But this isn’t a task for innovation, but for plodding reverse engineering.”  It was true enough, and Brainstorm, for once, was without retort, muttering something Perceptor didn’t try too hard to catch as he slunk off to his corner of the lab.

Perceptor’s optics flicked to the datascreen, now blank and dark. No. He’d seen more than enough. He opened to the file with his notes. Maybe his logical mind had recovered, was ready for more.  Primus knew his spark couldn’t take much more, cloyed with the thought of Drift and Wing, bound in their desire, no space for light between them.

Certainly no room for him.

He sighed, turning to the orb definitively, shutting out those thoughts—or trying to—focusing on the problem before him.  The shape called to him, hinting something.  It should mean something to him, he thought, it should be familiar.

Ah.

Ah.  An oblate spheroid, the required forcefield shape for gluometric particles.  He sat forward on his seat, looking at the shape again. If that was the purpose, it would have to have some access on the containment axis.

His hands found the tools, without looking.  Drift had teased him, once, for the precise way he always laid out his tools, but it made moments like this effortless—no fumbling, no searching, just reaching behind and just so, there was the tachyon spanner, as his other hand moved to the orb’s surface, seeking among the complicated panels for what must be a hatch. 

Here, a hexagonal hatch.

Perhaps he should wait, perhaps he should go less on a hunch and a desire to show up Brainstorm. Perhaps he should clear his head, shake the last cobwebs of Drift and Wing, entwined together. 

But he didn’t. He pressed on, leaning over the hatch, as it irised open, the tachyon spanner in his hand, and then the world went hot and green and violent, his video field shredding, his audio screaming offline.

And then nothing but the thin, charred thought that at this moment, this very moment, agony tearing through his systems, Drift and Wing were tangled together in the throes of a delicate intimacy.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wrapping things up.

Cyclonus didn’t like medibays.  He didn’t imagine anyone did—sites of loss and death and pain, and there had been too much of that, for far too long. 

He’d played his part, too, with Galvatron, with Nemesis before. He’d been deluded, nearly to the point of helping hand Cybertron over to D-Void. He’d come to his senses, almost too late.

He had his own burden to bear, his own redemption he had to make. And maybe, he thought, that was why he was answering Ratchet’s call that he get down to medibay, now, in the middle of the nightcycle.

“I am here,” he said, flatly, at First Aid, feeling large and awkward, and hating the smell of this place—disinfectant and charred capacitors. 

First Aid nodded, gesturing him to follow, leading him back into a dark cubicle. “He asked for you,” First Aid said, and for a klik, seeing a splash of white, Cyclonus’s spark failed, thinking it was Tailgate.  

But no, the white shaded into red, into legs much longer than Tailgate’s.  Strange, but familiar lines, from aeons ago, from before the war.

Wing.

He turned to First Aid, scowling. “Is this a joke?” He did not find it funny. He didn’t find much funny, honestly, so he thought it was maybe worth checking. 

“It’s not.” Wing’s voice, a thready whisper, one hand moving on the berth, turning the palm up, opening. 

Cyclonus had no idea what the gesture meant, but he stopped, waiting.  

“He wanted someone to recite the Primal Sacrament.” First Aid gave a look, the kind Cyclonus didn't believe until that moment the quiet medic had--a fire and determination that brooked no denial. 

Cyclonus’s optics flicked down to the prone form.  Was he that close to death?

“He’ll be all right…we think,” First Aid said. “But I think it would make him feel better, anyway.”

Feel better. “What happened?” He didn’t care. He didn’t like Wing. But he asked anyway.

“There was an accident, in the lab. And Wing was a match for Perceptor’s spark.”  First Aid’s hands fluttered, showing there was a long story there, but Cyclonus gathered enough of it, cutting him short with a nod.

He could fill in the rest. Wing, his own spark barely restarted, weak and unstable, but wanting to do the noble thing, the right thing, save someone’s life, even if it meant his own.  It reminded him, abruptly, of when Galvatron repaired his spark, that dark day on Gorlam Prime, when he’d become Galvatron’s creature. He’d felt weak then, and he could see something like that in the tarnished gold of the jet’s optics.

And that decided him, and he jerked his helm for First Aid to leave, drawing a stool close by the medical slab.  “The Primal Sacrament,” he said, as First Aid stepped out, the lights dimming with him, so the room was lit only with their optics, red gold and brassy. 

Wing nodded, weakly, his mouth trying to work.

Someone else would make a joke, perhaps, about Wing being without his silvery words, but Cyclonus was not a joke maker.  He was grateful, if nothing else, for the silence, trying to put aside all that irritated him about Wing, and concentrate only on this one link—someone who knew the Primal Sacrament in High Cyberran, and took comfort in the ancient scriptures.

He didn’t know, he couldn’t ask what associations they had for Wing. For him, it reminded him of the Ark, of Nova Prime when he was still Nova, of a mission full of danger and hope, of the honor of being chosen. Of the golden days of a world he understood.

Not this world, torn by factions, ravaged by war, honor seemingly dead or in hiding. Too strange, too foreign, too alive for someone who had been in the Dead Universe, who had been away so long he felt like a stranger in his own land, an estranged lover, at best.

But the Primal Sacrament was a link to that, to who he was, what he believed in and it was a link Wing was reaching for, through him.  He nodded, and began, the comforting story of Primus and his descendants, losing himself in the rhythm and flow of language, the way the syllables rippled with power and beauty, the old tongue more melodious, more enigmatic, than NeoCybex’s workaday forms.

And Wing’s EM field seemed to soothe itself, smoothing down, his ventilation slowing and deepening, some of the tension leaving his frame.  His mouth worked, slowly, repeating a word, slowly, carefully, and when Cyclonus paused, leaning in to hear it, the language no one else but Tailgate spoke to him with:  the word was ‘drukka.xhoi’ over and over.

‘Gratitude’.

[***]

Everything in the room seemed too-sharp-edged, and it took Perceptor a moment to realize that it was because he was seeing without the haze of scratches that built up over time on every mech’s optics. 

New optics. 

And he followed that thread back, to the explosion, something that seemed so clear now: the lesser gravity of the space ship had destabilized the neutron forcefield, and when he’d opened the hatch, the pressure just blew, upward, outward, a geyser of gluons seeking equilibrium. And his face--it all felt sore, new, the plates stiff, the lower connections still stinging and scorched.

A sloppy error. His hand squeezed into a fist, frustrated with himself.

“You’re awake.” 

Drift’s voice, a suppressed murmur, as though afraid his voice would be too much, too loud.

It wasn’t: it sent a hard wave of emotion straight through Perceptor’s spark, like a push of energy, like purified engex to his head, but it wasn’t too much. It was the most welcome sound he could imagine, and he turned, on new neck joints, to the blue optics, craving contact. 

Drift took his hand, a relieved smile on his face. He looked tired, haggard, so different from the last time Perceptor had seen him, gleaming and eager under Wing’s hands, and Perceptor wondered how long he’d been out, his chronometer still foxed from the gluons.

“Drift,” he said, and then subsided, as though the word itself, the name and all it meant, was exhausting. 

“We thought we’d lost you,” Drift said. “I thought I’d lost you.”

I wanted to be lost, Perceptor thought, at least, lost to himself, out of the emotional vortex that was pulling him under.   He wanted to be gone, out of the way of where he didn’t belong. 

“You have Wing, now.”

A flicker of something in Drift’s face. “Yes, I have Wing.  But it’s not like—you keep trying to make it some sort of exchange, some sort of limit, like it has to be one or the other.”  Drift looked unhappy, in that hurt, spark-tearing way that he had, too open, too honest. 

“I can’t give you what Wing can.”

“So?” Another furrow of the supraorbital ridges. “That’s the point, isn’t it? You’re not him. He’s not you. You can’t what he can, you can what he can’t.”   His hands twisted on his lap. Drift always felt he wasn’t good with words, spontaneously, under pressure.  But he was trying,  and that alone meant a lot.

“I can’t,” Perceptor said, his mouthplates stiff, but only partly from the newness. He remembered that night, Drift, aglow and earnest, professing love, and Perceptor, turning away.  Wing was just an excuse, maybe, a projection, something to blame for his own failure, a failure that had happened before Wing. 

“You can’t…what?” A look of confusion, still hurt.

“I can’t…,” Perceptor shook his head, elbowing himself slowly upward to face Drift. “I can’t do that, like a conjunx endura. I can’t be everything to you.” Or Drift everything to him: he still held an aching scar from when Drift had left the Wreckers. He wasn’t ready to let that wall down; he wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready. Because he knew that even before that, there was Turmoil, and stretching before that a long history of shyness, fumbling failure, to the point where he’d despaired of ever finding anyone.

And then there was Drift, like a star of hope, and then…that star had proved too bright for his feeble optics.

But still. He wanted Drift.  He wanted Drift to want him. And it had taken Wing to show him that, in  a way. He thought he’d had enough, he’d thought he was contented.  He hadn’t been—merely at an equilibrium where he couldn’t find specifics to be discontented about. 

“No one,” Drift said, his palm coming to rest on Perceptor’s, cautiously, like a bird seeking an unstable landing, “can be everything to another. And they shouldn’t. It shouldn’t be one way, what you can be, what you can give.”  He shifted, the red spaulders cutting shapes out of the shadows of the mediberth room.  “Perceptor, you…you’ve given me so much. You gave me a second chance when no one else did. You fought alongside me on Cybertron—I-I haven’t had someone get my back for me like that since…well…a long time ago.”  A sad smile curved over his shadowed mouthplates. “You ground me, keep me stable. And I want…I want to do something like that, _be_ something like that for you, too.”   He looked up at Perceptor’s optics, intense. “And I know Wing does, too.”

Wing. Who wasn’t here. Was it the jet’s elegant manners, or something else? 

“I do.” A voice, breathless, from the doorway behind Perceptor. He lifted his head, to see the jet, leaning heavily on Cyclonus’s arm. Cyclonus, of all mechs, who looked stiff and formal and like he’d rather be anywhere else, but still, helping ease Wing into the room. Wing settled on a chair, murmuring a word to Cyclonus that Perceptor didn’t catch, some liquid, trilling sound, that Cyclonus responded to with a stiff bow before leaving. Wing turned his face, pale and drawn, to Drift, his voice soft and teasing. “What do I do?” 

Perceptor could see the smile kindle on Drift’s face, like a sun burning through clouds. “You want to do something for Perceptor.”

“Oh. I definitely do.”  Already, still, his limbs trembling on his seat, he had his poise, a faded smile but still there, like an artifact.  “You’ve given me, well, everything. And I hope I can offer something to you.”

‘Something’, opening the room for negotiation, for whatever Perceptor wanted to take .

Perceptor put the pieces together, suddenly, in one of those synaptic leaps that had made him a good scientist: Wing’s sudden weakness. His own aching spark.  Wing had helped him, healed him. The symbolism was impossible not to notice, the same as the new optics. “We’re even, I’d think.”

A graceful moue, as Wing shook his head. “It’s not about that, obligation, owing. That’s what the war started, this idea of paying back, keeping balances, like a ledger.” He shook his head, then leaned forward, his hand catching on the edge of the berth, almost dizzy. “You can’t run a relationship like an account book.”

Drift nodded, shooting Wing a worried look, but turning back to Perceptor. “It’s up to you, Perceptor.” And Perceptor had realized it always had been: Drift and Wing, knocking at the wall around his spark, and he, trying so hard to protect himself that he’d seen obstacles where there weren’t, hallucinating rejection. They’d tried to pull him into their light, and he’d turned toward the shadow.

And he’d turned away because he’d been holding onto the idea of having to be too much to Drift, afraid he couldn’t bear the weight, couldn’t give enough. And it had made him think that what he could give was worthless, mean and petty.

It was a shift, like the berth moving beneath him, to think of that, that maybe the idea of one true perfect match was just not going to work, not in the post-war world, where everyone was hurt, partial, damaged. Perhaps it took more to make one whole.

He reached out, catching Wing’s shoulder with one arm, pulling the jet’s helm closer, feeling Wing give a contented sigh as he pressed  his face into Perceptor’s chassis, as though taking comfort in his stolidity, his presence. And he took comfort too, suddenly, his other hand tightening in Drift’s, offering a weary smile, his head throbbing with the weight and change of it. 

And it wasn’t ‘perfect’, it wasn’t the romantic ideal he’d seen in so many holovids, but it was real and good and pure, three lost mechs, finding themselves in each other. 


End file.
